


wax all the floors and open the trap doors

by leahalexis



Series: if you were mine (fem!Stiles) [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Female Stiles Stilinski, Genderswap, Minor Character Death, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leahalexis/pseuds/leahalexis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We had a good thing going here, Derek!" Stiles said, her voice high and a little hysterical. "Like a buddy cop movie! With the sniping, and the—no kissing! There is no kissing in buddy cop movies!”</p><p>Jackson’s no longer a kamina, but Erica and Boyd are still missing. There’s a whole month left of school. Scott and Allison aren’t talking. And Stiles is pretty positive that Derek is gay.</p><p>Or she was, anyway. Pre-kissing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> This branches off from a rough approximation of canon after the end of season 2. Some resemblance to aspects of 3A are accidental (as I've been tinkering with this since April); others are not.
> 
> My girl!Stiles art of choice for this fic (from the neck up, at least): http://shamanmy.deviantart.com/art/I-just-fell-in-love-362712584 
> 
> Title from the Happy Bullets’ “If You Were Mine.”

Stiles was glad when Jackson left, okay? Jackson was an asswipe, and creepily dead-eyed (even _before_ the whole lizard thing) and also Stiles still hadn’t forgiven him from the time in the eighth grade he used a mirror to look up her skirt.

She was so glad when he left that she thought about throwing a party, but she was crap at party throwing, and nobody but Scott would have shown up anyway.

She did, however, go to Lydia’s.

She was even invited. Sort of. Lydia, a shiny, practiced smile fixed and brittle on her pink-glossed lips, had marched up to her and Scott’s table Monday at lunch and said, loudly, “You’ll be at my house for Jackson’s going away party this Friday.”

Stiles and Scott exchanged a look.

Scott said, tentatively, “Uh, isn’t Jackson, um . . .”

“. . . already _gone_?” Stiles finished for him. “Like, without telling anybody he was leaving?”

“8 pm,” Lydia said. She raised her brows, pursed her lips, and added, “Try to look nice.”

Then she pivoted on one pastel spiked heel and departed, coordinated handbag knocking even more frenetically against her hip than usual.

“I don’t think she’s doing so good,” Scott observed as they watched her go.

Stiles snorted. “No kidding.”

It was more of an invitation than Stiles had gotten to Lydia’s birthday party two months ago, anyway. And she still felt pretty shitty about the whole no-one-telling-Lydia-about-werewolves situation. So she went. To Jackson’s going away party.

No punch this time, Stiles noticed. Plenty of beer, though. And plenty of people. Stiles had spotted Allison early on and lifted a hand in greeting; Allison had given her an awkward smile back and then turned away. Because Scott and Allison were technically off again, and that meant _Stiles_ and Allison were off again.

Stiles couldn’t blame Allison, exactly, since anything Allison said to her would get right back to Scott. It just, you know, sucked. Especially after it had taken them so long to get past the whole jealousy over Scott thing—okay, taken _Stiles_ a while to get past it. She thought they’d really been becoming _friend_ -friends, instead of Stiles being just a convenient way to pass messages. But if sides were being picked, Stiles was always on Scott’s.

Even though Scott was now almost an hour late, the fucker. He was supposed to ride over with her, but he’d texted that there was a last minute thing he had to help Deaton with at work and that he’d meet her there. Leaving her standing alone in Lydia’s foyer, bobbing her head a little to the music and wondering why she’d ever been so desperate to get invited to Lydia’s parties to begin with. The only people here she knew besides Allison and Lydia were people she didn’t really want to talk to. She didn’t even see Danny.

And then she sensed something kind of dark and threatening and loom-y to her left, so she turned her head and—of course. Derek.

“Derek!” she said, smiling widely. Because bugging Derek was always a good time. “Did Lydia invite you? That must have been awkward. Like, hey, sorry about knocking you out and using your crazy alpha powers to resurrect your dead uncle. Party at my place!”

Derek was glowering, and even then he looked more like he belonged there than Stiles did. Which figured. As awkward as Derek could be when it came to, like, people he knew, he had a baffling ability to seem totally self-possessed around everybody else. Scary, usually, but self-possessed.

“You’re wearing a dress,” Derek said, instead of _Stiles_ or _Hello_ or _What?_ His total refusal to follow simple rules of polite conversation used to annoy her. Now it just made her feel kind of fond.

“I know!” Stiles spun in circle, pleased to have someone to show it off to. “Pretty rockin’, right?”

It was retro and flirty, with a sweetheart neckline and halter straps to make it look like she had a little more up top, buttons down the front to her waist, and a flared skirt, all of it covered in bright cherries against a black background.

Derek frowned. “It’s too short.” 

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, _Dad_ ,” she said, and took a certain amount of delight in the way his jaw clenched.

“You look like you’re playing dress up.” 

“Correction: I look like I’m _winning_ dress up.” She’d even clipped a little back bow in her pixie-cut hair. “Don’t hate just because I look cuter in skirt than you do.”

“I’m looking for Scott,” Derek said, clearly unwilling to be deterred further, and Stiles sighed. Seriously, if people like Lydia and Derek kept up this whole talking like she hadn’t spoken thing, she was going to develop a complex.

“Join the club, buddy,” she told him. She had dibs on president. “He was supposed to meet me here at, like, 8:30.”

“It’s after 9.”

“Way to tell time, there, Derek.”

Derek closed his eyes like she pained him. _Score_. “I need to talk to him.”

“You can talk to me,” Stiles suggested. She wasn’t even flirting. Much. “I can give him the message, or whatever.”

Derek looked down at her, indecision flickering in his face. Then, looking like he’d swallowed something sour, he said, “Fine. Not here.”

“Oh! Can we take the Camaro?” Stiles asked, perking up. She loved her Jeep, but Derek’s car—it was a _nice_ car. She’d had a couple of pretty awesome dreams involving that car. And its owner, maybe, but her subconscious mind was shallow, and Derek was pretty. Like his car.

Derek stared at her, then turned for the door. Stiles glanced over to where Lydia, playing hostess, stood with a smile as brittle and shiny as the one she’d turned on Stiles and Scott earlier that week, and sighed.

“Wait up,” she said to Derek, and scrambled after him.

* 

They ended up at the ice cream place a few minutes’ drive away. Or rather, they’d ended up in the parking lot of the ice cream place, and Stiles had been hungry, and everybody was at Lydia’s so the place was empty.

Derek sat on one side of a booth near the back, facing the door, sunglasses on indoors like the douchebag he usually acted like. There was nothing on the table in front of him and one of his arms was spread out across the back of the seat, while Stiles sat across from him digging in to a banana split. So much better than standing awkwardly in a corner at Lydia’s.

 _Getting some ice cream_ , she’d texted Scott, in case he was actually still coming. She didn’t mention Derek because if Scott did show up, the look on his face at finding her there with Derek like they were on some parody of a date from the 1950s would be _hilarious_.

“So,” Stiles prompted Derek after swallowing her second bite. “What’s up?”

There was still a little caramel left on the spoon, and she got distracted for a second licking it off. When she back at Derek was staring at her like she was a crazy person. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the tinted shades, but she knew what those brows meant.

“What?” she said defensively, resisting the urge to tug her ice cream a little closer.

He sucked his cheeks in; it was attractive to watch, even if she wasn’t sure what had prompted it. “Nothing.”

“So what’s the thing you wanted to tell Scott?” she asked, magnanimously choosing to overlook Derek’s weirder-than-usualness.

“Jackson disappeared.”

“Uh,” Stiles said, putting the spoon down, feeling like she was having to do this intervention a lot lately. “You know he moved away, right?”

Derek shook his head. “His scent disappears at the edge of Beacon Hills.”

“Maybe he showered?”

“So does his family’s. And all their belongings’.”

That was more interesting. Stiles took a contemplative bite of the strawberry ice cream. “Hmm.”

“Just tell Scott to watch his back,” Derek said. “First Boyd and Erica, now Jackson. Maybe it’s a coincidence, and Jackson’s fine. But if there’s something after us, Scott should know.”

“I’ll tell him,” Stiles said, instead of, _Why didn’t you just pick up the phone and_ call _him, dipshit?_ Though Scott was admittedly pretty bad about answering the phone these days, and that was when _Stiles_ called.

Derek nodded once, then paused, expression unreadable behind the sunglasses.

“What?” she asked, lifting her hand to rub her thumb over her mouth, in case she had chocolate sauce on it.

He reached over and, before she could make even a token effort at stopping him, plucked the cherry off the top of her sundae and popped it into his mouth.

Her jaw dropped. She was _eating_ that.

“You just took my—“ she started, then slapped a hand over her mouth, because no. No one was finishing that sentence.

Derek grinned—actually grinned. “See you, Stiles,” he said, dropping the cherry stem on the table between them and sliding out of the booth.

She was so flabbergasted, it took her a moment to realize what had just happened. Abandoning her ice cream, she ran to the door just in time to see the Camaro peeling away.

“Hey!” she shouted after him anyway, waving her arms. “My car’s still at Lydia’s, you asshole!”

*

After Stiles finished her banana split—because priorities—she called Scott. He picked up on the first ring.

“Stiles, hey!” She could hear the sounds of the party going on around him. “Where are you? Are you here?”

Did he not read his text messages anymore?

“Funny story,” she said, “no.”

“I thought I saw your car outside, though,” Scott said.

“You did. I need you to come get me at the ice cream place on Maple.”

“But I just—”

“It is 10 o’clock at night, I’m all by myself, and I’m a teenage girl.” Who’d left her police-issue taser at home, because it didn’t fit in the bag that went with the dress. “I am not walking back to Lydia’s alone!”

She didn’t _want_ to threaten to call his mother, but she would.

Scott said, “Geez, I’m coming! Have you noticed you only play the girl card when you need me to do something?”

“Shut it,” she said crossly. Because yes, yes she had. She was just hoping _he_ hadn’t.

“I’ll be there in five.”

Stiles spent all five minutes it took Scott to get there working herself up into an angry snit about Derek. When Scott’s car pulled up in front of the ice cream place, Stiles yanked open the door and _threw_ herself inside.

“Bad date?” Scott asked, grinning at her. He wasn’t even trying to pretend he wasn’t.

“Ha ha,” she griped. “No. Derek _fucking_ Hale.”

“He would be a bad date.”

“Okay, _thank you_ ,” she said. “That is exactly what I told Danny.”

“You were talking to Danny about dating Derek?”

“Technically we were talking about dating my cousin Miguel.”

Scott gave her an incredulous look over his shoulder as he pulled out into the street. “Your—what?”

“Forget it.”

She was still trying to. Not the bit with the shirtlessness in her bedroom—that part she remembered both frequently and warmly—but the bit afterwards where Derek had looked like he wanted to slam her face into the steering wheel of her Jeep. Which was so not fair. She’d clearly been doing him a favor, introducing him to somebody like Danny.

Which was exactly what she’d tried to tell him: “Come on! Danny’s hot, right? I’d hit that. If he had any interest at all in girls in general and me in particular.” 

Derek had grimaced, which was, frankly, offensive.

“What’s wrong with Danny?” she’d demanded. “Did a pair of dimples steal your lunch money once? Do you just hate smart guys?”

“I like smart,” Derek had muttered.

“It can’t be the pecs that are putting you off, with how much time you obviously spend on yours.”

“Stiles,” Derek had said, back to looking murderous instead of just uncomfortable. “Go.”

Derek Hale: totally ungrateful.

Speaking of—

“Derek was looking for you at the party,” she reported to Scott.

He groaned. “Is it too much to hope he just wanted to say hi?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve never even heard him use the _word_ hi,” Stiles said. “He wanted to let us know that Jackson’s gone missing.”

Scott sat up straighter and glanced over at her in alarm. “Missing like Erica and Boyd?”

Stiles let herself pout for a second or two about how Scott had connected the dots faster than she had—though, to be fair, she’d been distracted by ice cream. Then she confirmed, “Yeah, like that. He wanted us—well, you—to watch your back. In case it wasn’t random, or, like, Jackson just trying to slip Derek’s wolfy leash.” Maybe she’d added that last part.

“Is he looking for Jackson too, now?”

“Dude, I don’t know.” She shrugged, sliding lower in her seat and kicking her feet up on the dash while tucking her skirt carefully around her thighs. “He just said to tell you to watch out, swiped my favorite part of the sundae, then left me stranded. Like a dick.” 

Scott smirked. “He stole your—”

“Don’t you dare say it,” she threatened, then crossed her arms to sulk.

They pulled up to where Stiles’ car was still parked. Jackson’s “going away” party (“going missing” party?) was still raging. Looking uncharacteristically reluctant in the face of an opportunity to gaze longingly at Allison, Scott looked over at Stiles and said, “Uh, so . . . party.”

Stiles sighed, looking down at her new dress. Which, she tried to tell herself, would be totally wasted if she just went home now. “Right. Party.”

They both sat there for a long moment, and then Stiles ventured, “Dad bought some ice cream the other day. He’s been busy, so there’s probably still some left.”

“Yeah?” Scott asked. “What flavor?" 

“Chocolate fudge swirl,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t really get to enjoy my sundae earlier, because of the whole Derek thing. And there’re Doritos, too.”

“If there are Doritos,” Scott said with relief.

Grinning, she unbuckled her seatbelt, unlocked the car door, and hopped out, locating her car keys in her bag refreshingly easily. “My place in ten?”

Lydia couldn’t really be mad. They’d showed up; surely that had to count for something.

* 

“Rise and shine, kid,” her father greeted her at 10 am the next morning—way too early, given Scott had left after 3.

She’d been dreaming: a big black wolf had been snatching cherries with its teeth from the dress she’d worn the night before, one by one, and crunching threateningly on the stones. She wasn’t even sure it could be called symbolism, the dream was so literal. No more ice cream right before bed, seriously.

“Come on, Stiles,” her dad said. “Up!” 

“Pancakes?” she asked her pillow hopefully. 

“Only if you’re making them. I have to head in, we're short staffed this week.”

Stiles groaned and pulled the covers up over her head.

“Don’t spend the whole day in bed,” he called back from the hallway.

Twenty minutes later she dragged herself out of her room and down to the kitchen. The coffee left in the pot was lukewarm, but she drank it anyway in between bites of untoasted pop tart while flipping through tv channels in search of some decent cartoons.

She hated Saturdays a little bit—the ones when her dad worked, anyway. She got bored.

She took a shower after she ate, pulled on her skinny jeans and one of her mom’s old plaid work shirts, then wasted twenty minutes or so tying to get her hair to stick up in a Mohawk. And then she spent another fifteen minutes trying to wash the gunk out of her hair in the sink before saying fuck it, rubbing it with a towel, and letting it do whatever it wanted like usual.

At about 3 pm, she got restless enough to do her homework. By 4:30, she was wiki-diving, and by 5:15, she was using her dad’s badge number to get access to the Whittemores’ last two weeks of credit card records.

(What?)

The results were—weird.

She grabbed her phone and texted Derek. _what day did u lose the whittemores?_

 _What are you doing?_ came back to her a minute later.

She liked to imagine that every time she texted him she was interrupting him working out. And that the reason for the time delay was him having to get up off the floor or whatever, put on a shirt, and spend a few seconds glaring at the phone for sabotaging his efforts at personal maintenance before he could actually read the message.

 _nothing dangerous_ , she typed. _a little light hacking._  

 _I’m coming there._  

Stiles rolled her eyes. Of course he was.

She exported her search results, hit print, and closed out of the database. Then she used the rest of the time until Derek was prying open her window to check her hair—still pretty bad—and see how many times in a row she could spin around in her chair before getting dizzy (answer: six).

“I can’t believe you’d rather drive halfway across town than text me back an answer like a normal person-wolf,” she said as soon as she heard the thump of his feet hitting the floor, spinning around one more time for good measure.  “Do you just hate texting, or is it phones in general you have a grudge against?” Glaring was admittedly less effective over the phone.

“I didn’t drive.” 

“Run, whatever.”

Derek took a step toward her, and then his nostrils flared, and he made a face. 

“ _What_?” she asked, exasperated. So her room wasn’t the cleanest. He was the one who invited himself over. She had no obligation to Febreze the place down for his delicate werewolf sensibilities.

“Your room smells like Scott.”

“Gross,” she said, making a face of her own. Then she sat up straighter in interest. “Hey, what does Scott smell like? Wait—what do _I_ smell like?”

Derek said, “Show me what you found.” Of course he did. He never wanted to talk about the _cool_ parts of being a werewolf.

“I’m going to assume roses,” she said as she thrust a print out at him. “Or, no, something more badass than roses. Those awesome creepy purple flowers that look like huge insect mouths.” She mimed them badly with her hands.

Derek glanced up at her from the page with a disbelieving look.

“Like you know what they’re called,” she huffed.

“Irises,” Derek said, “probably subgenus _luminiris_ or _scorpiris_ ,” and Stiles’ mouth dropped open.

“My mother had a greenhouse,” Derek said. He looked put out, probably at being forced to share a personal detail. He lifted the printout. “Tell me what I’m looking at.”

“You know about _flowers_ ,” Stiles couldn’t help saying, grinning, then held her hands up at his scowl. “Okay, fine, fine. It’s a list of charges to Jackson and his parents’ credit cards.”

Derek flipped over the paper. “This last one’s from yesterday.”

“Right? As if they aren’t missing at all! And if you’re just looking at dates and frequency, everything looks normal there, too, there’s no gap or anything. But a lot of the charges are weird.”

Derek’s eyebrows drew in as he read down the page again. “Weird how?”

“Weird like Jackson wouldn’t be caught dead in a Wal-Mart. Weird like there are no hotels. There are, like, a half dozen gas charges, but they’re all from places right outside of Beacon Hills. So unless Jackson and his parents are circling the city and sleeping in their cars while their stuff heads for Chicago . . .”

Stiles trailed off meaningfully.

Derek said, still frowning at the paper,  “At least half of these are in Newton.”

“Are we going to check it out?” Stiles asked eagerly. Saturday night: saved!

“I am. You’re staying here,” Derek said, carefully folding the printout and tucking it into an inside jacket pocket.

Totally unfair. “I was the one who found the lead!”’

Derek shrugged, already headed for the window, like doorknobs offended his delicate werewolf sensibilities just as much as texting.

Stiles let out a huff and collapsed back into her desk chair, and then almost fell out of it when Derek turned at the window to look back at her.

“Thank you,” he said, the words soft and a little scratchy like he hadn’t used them in awhile.

“Anything for Jackson,” Stiles said brightly, like an idiot.

Derek raised his eyebrows, and then he was gone, leaving her to hit her head against the top of her desk a few times. There was something _wrong_ with her. Clearly.

*

Monday morning she woke up to—wonder of wonders— _a text from Derek_ , sent at 5:14 am.

 _Nothing tonight_ , it read. _Sure you got the right records?_

 _Ha ha_ , she typed back, hoping she woke him up, but also weirdly pleased he’d bothered to let her know how it went at all.

So the day was going pretty well, all things considered, until she got to school and ran into Allison—literally—on her way up the stairs out front.

“Sorry, sorry,” Stiles was saying, even as she looked up from retrieving her bookbag where it’d fallen on the ground and saw who she’d bumped into. 

Allison gave a self-conscious little smile down at her and said, “No problem.”

And then they were both just standing there, not saying anything. Probably Allison was too polite to just keep walking. Stiles wasn’t polite so much as just kind of inept.

“So uh,” Stiles said finally, “have a good time at Lydia’s party Friday night?”

And Jesus, you weren’t supposed to have awkward post-break-up conversations with people you yourself _didn’t actually date_. In what world was that fair?

“Yeah, it was good,” Allison said. “Less, uh, eventful than the last one?”

Stiles forced a laugh, and Allison looked down uncomfortably, tucking her hair behind her ear. Students were forced to divert their paths up the stairs to walk around them. 

Stiles was just about to blurt out something embarrassingly nonsensical and make a break for it when Lydia showed up. Stiles had never been so happy to see Lydia in her life, and that was saying something.

“Good morning, Allison,” Stiles heard Lydia say behind her, and then, as she glanced at them in passing, “Stiles."

“Hey Lydia,” Allison said.

Stiles called after her, automatically, “I like your shoes!” And she did; they were fabulous. Stiles would have fallen over in them.

When Stiles looked back from admiring both said shoes and the bounce of Lydia’s strawberry blond curls as they disappeared behind the school’s front door, Allison was still staring after Lydia, frowning.

It was the perfect time to make an excuse and go.

But—

“What’s wrong?” Stiles asked hesitantly.

Allison looked startled, but shrugged a little and gave a half-hearted smile. “Lydia’s just been acting kind of strange.”

“The whole Jackson being gone thing?” Stiles offered.

“Maybe,” Allison said, but she sounded unconvinced. “She just seems really distracted. She got a B on a calculus test the other day? And totally just brushed it off. We were supposed to go to the mall today after school, and last night she cancelled.” Allison shook her head. “Sorry. I’m sure it’s nothing. Forget I said anything.”

“Sure,” Stiles lied agreeably, already trying to come with an excuse to talk to Lydia. Because if Jackson was Erica-and-Boyd missing, and Lydia was acting weird . . .

“Seriously, Stiles—” Allison started, but then Stiles’ phone vibrated in her bag.

Making what she hoped looked like an apologetic face at Allison, Stiles swung her bag around to snag the phone from the front pocket—Scott, wondering where she was. Her best friend was so much needier when he didn’t have a girlfriend. Stiles should probably feel worse about having missed it. Especially given who she was standing there talking to.

“I gotta—” she said, waving the phone, and Allison said, “It’s fine.”

Stiles shoved the thing back into her bag. “Well,” she said, a lot too brightly, “I’ll see you,” and headed quickly for the door.

“Hey,” Allison said before Stiles got there, and when Stiles looked back at her, there was a soft smile on her face, small but genuine. “It was good to talk to you, Stiles.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, upset all over again that Allison was Scott’s, and couldn’t also be hers, “you, too.”

*

Stiles couldn’t stop thinking about Lydia all day. Which wouldn’t have been _totally_ out of character—there’d been a couple years there where she’d been kind of obsessed with Lydia Martin—except that she wasn’t thinking about how much she wished she had Lydia’s hair or could sit with her at lunch. She was just worried. About Lydia, and about _Jackson_ , and wasn’t that the stupidest feeling she’d ever had.

In chemistry, Scott nudged her under the lab table with his knee and said, voice low, “You’re staring at Lydia again.”

Rolling her eyes at Scott’s half-worried, half-judgmental tone, she awkwardly kicked him sideways in the shin. “I think something’s up with her.”

“Like what?” Scott asked, brow furrowed, and then Harris looked their way and they both made a show of looking at the notebooks they were supposed to be taking notes in.

Stiles scribbled on her blank page: _I don’t know. Allison says she’s acting weird. Like she cancelled their shopping plans this afternoon._

 _You talked to Allison?!!_ Scott wrote back, entirely unsurprisingly.

 _Focus!_ she wrote. _I think we should follow her after school._

_Allison?_

_LYDIA._

Scott drew a hideous smiley face. _Kidding! I’m in. Do you think it has something to do with Jackson?_

 _What else?_ Stiles answered. And she hadn’t even had a chance to tell Scott about the weird credit card charges yet.

Scott beat her to the parking lot after school—probably because werewolf—but they both got there ahead of Lydia. So they waited in the Jeep, engine idling, until she swished past them, head up and steps sharp and sure as she made her way down the sidewalk to her car.

“She looks okay to me,” Scott commented as they followed her progress, and Stiles made a face.

“It comes and goes?” she suggested.

They followed her anyway.

“It’s not like either of us had anything better to do,” Stiles pointed out while they were lurking in the parking lot of the high-end coffee shop near Lydia’s neighborhood, waiting for Lydia to re-emerge.

“Yeah,” Scott agreed with a sigh and what Stiles had privately christened his _sad about Allison_ _again_ face.

When Lydia finally came back out, she was carrying two coffees.

“Skinny cinnamon dulce iced latte,” Scott read off the cups, leaning forward and squinting as Lydia opened her car for, “and a 130-degree half-caf half-pump mocha latte.” Scott frowned, and not just, Stiles assumed, at how obnoxious the drink order was. “Isn’t that—”

“How Jackson takes his coffee,” Stiles finished. She was perversely glad now for the ill-advised Lydia-stalking endeavor that had led to both of them knowing that particular bit of info. “That’s weird, right?”

“Maybe it’s like ordering an extra drink in honor of a fallen soldier?” Scott suggested, skeptically.

“That actually isn’t less weird,” Stiles said, and Scott didn’t disagree.

They followed Lydia back past the school to the other side of town, and into the sketchier area not too far from the abandoned train depot Derek and Isaac were still kind of squatting in, last Stiles had heard. (Apparently it wasn’t easy to get a rental application approved as an accused murderer, especially one whose last Beacon Hills address had burned down and taken a bunch of people with it. Which—fair.)

Lydia took a sharp right suddenly into an old closed-down gas station at the edge of town, forcing Stiles to make a U-turn and double back around. Then it took a minute to figure out where to park, because, as she explained to Scott, it wasn’t like they couldn’t just pull up next to Lydia’s car. It was too conspicuous.

Scott gave her an incredulous look. “Isn’t she going to see us anyway as soon as we follow her into the gas station?”

But there wasn’t really anyplace else to park, so in the end they just pulled up next to Lydia’s car after all. As a result, by the time Stiles and Scott got out, they’d managed to lose sight of Lydia entirely. She wasn’t in her car, and she wasn’t anywhere between them and the front of the gas station.

Which pretty much meant she had to be _in_ the gas station. And _that_ wasn’t creepy at all.

At least it was still daylight out, Stiles consoled herself as they started toward it.

“Wait,” Scott hissed suddenly, holding out an arm to keep her from going any further.

“You hear something?” Stiles whispered back, moving a little closer behind Scott.

She wasn’t _scared_ , okay? She was being _smart_. Only one of them had super strength, super-fast reflexes, and super-scary claws, and it wasn’t her.

“I’m not sure,” Scott said. “It kind of sounds like—”

And then Lydia screamed, plenty loud enough for even Stiles to hear.

When they got to the back entrance of the station’s garage, Lydia was clutching the doorway, stiff and wild-eyed. The coffee cups were tipped over on the floor, coffee puddled out around them. And at the far edges of the spreading coffee, the liquid was mixed with blood. The floor beyond was red. 

Stiles looked up, even as Scott gagged and cursed. Fixed to the tall garage ceiling were two still figures, male and female, eyes open and unseeing, slashed at the stomach and throat. 

Jackson’s parents.


	2. two

Stiles’ only interaction with either of Jackson’s parents had been that time in her dad’s office with the restraining order. She was distantly grateful for that now. It meant finding them dead didn’t mess up her head. Or at least any more than finding anybody dead would.

Still—blood. A lot of blood. She’d gone light and faint, but luckily Scott had been there to grab her before her knees gave out. She clutched at his shirt and buried her face in his neck, breathing in, out, until the dizziness passed.

“So this was fun,” she said eventually, voice muffled by Scott’s shirt. “Same thing again tomorrow?”

“You don’t get to plan our after school activities anymore,” Scott replied with a brief squeeze, still sounding pretty shaky himself.

She disentangled herself and stepped back, feeling steadier, and tried out a smile. “Fair.”

While Stiles coaxed Lydia away from the garage—studiously not looking at the bodies or the blood—Scott called Derek. Once upon a time, her dad would have been the first person Stiles called, but now—werewolves. And it wasn’t like she was especially eager to explain what she and Scott were doing at an abandoned gas station in the bad part of town.

When Derek arrived, Lydia was sitting silently in the passenger seat of Stiles’ Jeep, Scott’s jacket draped over her shoulders, while Scott and Stiles leaned against the car beside the open driver’s side door. Scott’s arm was around Stiles, and her head rested on his shoulder, because if you couldn’t take a little physical comfort from your best friend, who could you take it from?

Derek scowled when he saw them. Because of course he did. It was a day that ended in “y.”

Scott pulled her in a little closer to his side as Derek approached, and Stiles snorted. Scott’s protective instincts: awesome, but impervious to logic. Like _Derek_ was the threat here.

“Inside the garage,” Scott said, and Derek nodded.

“Lydia talking?”

Stiles glanced over her shoulder. Lydia had barely even moved. “Yeah, not so much.”

“Wait here,” Derek said, turning toward the garage, and Stiles rolled her eyes and muttered, “Not a problem.”

Scott rubbed her upper arm comfortingly.

“Take Lydia home,” was all Derek said when he re-emerged, expression even darker than it had been when he arrived. “See what you can get out of her. Why she came here.”

“No way,” Scott said, dropping his arm from around Stiles to take a serious and impressively threatening step forward. Stiles was, in fact, impressed. “We’re not just leaving!”

“There’s nothing else you can do here,” Derek said.

“What are _you_ gonna do?” Stiles said. “Stay and smell stuff?”

Derek looked at her, face pinched, in what she liked to think of as his _Stiles has accurately described the situation but I’m too much of a dickhead to admit it_ look.

She pointed out, helpfully, “Scott can smell stuff too, you know.”

“I came here because Jackson called me,” Lydia said out of nowhere, and Stiles startled and turned to look at her, peripherally aware of Scott and Derek doing the same.

Lydia wasn’t looking at any of them, though; she was staring out ahead through the windshield at nothing. Her voice was flat, but even. Like she hadn’t just found her boyfriend’s parents strung up and bled out. Or like she had, and it just hadn’t impressed her very much.

“How long have you and Jackson been in contact?” Derek asked.

Lydia turned her head to level him with an expression that rivaled any bitch face Stiles had ever seen, even on Derek’s own sour face, and Stiles thought, not for the first time, _If I liked girls . . ._

“Since he supposedly left town,” Derek amended, pretty pissily.

“The whole time, of course,” Lydia said. “But I only figured out he hadn’t left yesterday.”

“Do you know why he’s still here?” Scott jumped in, just before Stiles could.

“He said to meet him here today and he’d explain everything,” Lydia said. “But obviously we didn’t get around to that, did we.”

And that, finally, started to sound like the Lydia Stiles knew and frequently envied: cooler than a cucumber, even while pissed as hell. Stiles was kind of surprised Lydia didn’t flip her hair—but then she looked down at Lydia’s hands. They were clenched in Scott’s jacket so hard her knuckles were white.

Derek looked like he was going to say something else, but then he turned his head to the side, toward the road they’d come from earlier, stilling. After another moment, Stiles heard what Derek had in the distance: police sirens.

“If that’s all,” Lydia said, “I’d like to go home now.”

Derek gave a sharp nod. “We should all go. Lydia, if you hear from Jackson again, tell Scott.”

“Or Stiles,” Stiles said.

 Derek gritted his teeth and said, “Or Stiles.”

She made a face at him for his lack of enthusiasm, even though he was already disappearing back into the woods. Which—typical.

“Whatever,” Lydia said. But she didn’t show any signs of making her way to her own car.

Scott looked at Lydia, then at Stiles.

“I guess I’ll be driving Miss Martin,” Stiles said. “Follow us in hers?”

*

The drive to Lydia’s was awkward.

Stiles would have thought after their recent _Jackson’s a giant lizard and also dead except wait no just kidding_ bonding session that their interactions would have been a little less one-sided. And hey, maybe Lydia’s continued silence in the face of Stiles’ well-honed conversational skills was just a matter of this particular interaction’s proximity to violent death. A girl could hope, anyway.

Then, out of nowhere, halfway back to town, Lydia said, “It wasn’t Jackson.”

Stiles _hmm_ ed noncommittally, and Lydia gave her a withering look.

“Jackson gets mean when he feels threatened, and he’s _desperately_ insecure, but he’s not . . . He wouldn’t do _that_. Not to his parents.” She turned away, to look out the passenger-side window. “Not to anyone.”

“Sure, no,” Stiles said. “I mean, unless—just as an example—he’s being controlled. Again.” Or unless what he’d been through the past few months had changed him. Or unless Lydia didn’t know him as well as she thought.

Which put an abrupt end to that or any other conversation, unsurprisingly.

After Stiles dropped Lydia off, she took Scott home, because Scott still had a lot of finals-cramming to fit in if he was going to do anything even remotely like passing this year. Then she turned her car right back around and headed for the outskirts of town. Not the gas station, because you couldn't actually _pay_ her to go back there, but the general vicinity. Because it had been in one of the areas she remembered a lot of those charges on the Whittemores’ cards coming from.

The elder Whittemores were obviously a, well, dead end. But Jackson was probably still around, judging by the conspicuous absence of a third dead body—whether he was responsible for the first two dead bodies or not. And he had to be staying somewhere, right? It wasn’t with Lydia, clearly, though normally Lydia’s would have been the first place Stiles looked.

It couldn’t be a hotel, unless he was paying cash. So she was looking for somewhere that looked marginally livable for someone with Jackson’s no doubt high squatting standards, but where a lone teenage boy hanging around was unlikely to get noticed.

It took a little bit of driving around and some judicious use of Google maps, but she finally came up with a couple likely options. Also a renewed sense of _what the fuck_ about Beacon Hills’ urban planning. What had all those abandoned warehouses in various parts of town even been built for in the first place? It’s not like Beacon Hills had exports, or anything even remotely resembling industry.

Stiles started with the location closest to the gas station. Despite playing devil’s advocate in the car with Lydia, she couldn’t see even Jackson killing his own parents, and especially not purposefully leaving them for Lydia to find—and Stiles could imagine Jackson doing a _lot_ of shitty things, okay? But he still must have picked the place as a meeting spot for a reason, probably proximity. Also, it was the closest of her top five options to some actual civilization.

She vigorously did not think about how, if Jackson wasn’t responsible for what happened to his parents, that meant someone—or some _thing_ —else was. And had maybe left them there as a message. She continued to vigorously not think about that even as she parked her car a dozen feet off the main road, mostly hidden by trees ( _take that, Scott! Stealth!_ ), made sure her phone was on silent, and circled around to the back of the building. The sun was finally going down, which meant the shadows, never exactly uncreepy to begin with, were getting even creepier.

 _They’re just trees_ , she told herself. _That’s just a sinister old abandoned warehouse._ _Nothing to be afraid of here._

“What are you doing here?” Derek demanded lowly from right behind her, and she let out a little shriek before she could slap a hand over her mouth.

“Oh my _god_ , Derek, why do you _do_ that?

Her heart was going a mile a minute, of course, because that’s what happened, when somebody _snuck up on you_.

“I texted first,” Derek said.

She narrowed her eyes. He was completely straight-faced, but there was an undeniable hint of smug amusement in his voice.

Warily, she dug out her phone. He actually wasn’t kidding—she had a missed text message. When she opened it, though, it just said, _Behind you_.

“That’s _even creepier_ ,” she informed him, shoving her phone back into her jacket pocket, and he actually cracked a smile. Not a shit-eating grin, but an actual, pleased smile. Though mostly he looked pleased with himself.

“I kind of hate you,” she told him, but she was pretty sure that the way her mouth was turned up on one side showed that for the lie it was.

“This one’s a waste of time anyway,” Derek said, nodding toward the warehouse. “Nothing human or wolf has been here for awhile.”

“Okay, great,” she said. “Where to next, then?”

He got this look on his face like he hated his life—to be fair, though, that might just have been his face; it was the expression she saw on it most often—and turned and started walking.

“Come on, I’m awesome company,” she protested as she trotted after him. “And you know if you don’t take me with you, I’ll just go alone.”

“I know,” Derek said.

It wasn’t exactly a _Hey, Stiles, glad to have you along!_ but she’d take it.

*

They checked out another empty warehouse and several other rundown, little-used buildings from Stiles’ earlier Google mapping and Derek’s apparently encyclopedic knowledge of local places no one who was up to any good would ever want to live. They were investigating location number seven and Stiles was actually thinking of bailing—of heading back to her car and leaving Derek to it for the night—when Derek went still, stopping her with a light touch to her arm.

Her eyes went immediately to his face, and he cocked his head toward the left, fingers closing around her wrist and drawing her backwards and to the right, until they were concealed behind a cluster of dusty barrel drums.

(The whole hearing-things-last situation continued to really suck. Did they make the equivalent of binoculars for ears? She’d have to look into that.)

Derek raised a finger to his lips, and Stiles took a moment out of her very busy schedule of freaking the fuck out to roll her eyes, because duh. Whatever Derek had heard, it must have been moving closer, because Derek was getting steadily more tense.

Then, all of a sudden—

“Smell that?” a male voice said.

“Alpha,” a second, nearly identical voice said from a few feet to the left of the first. “Not one of us.”

Shit.

Derek nudged her, and pointed back the way they came. _Get ready to run_ , he mouthed.

Stiles nodded a little frantically. Yes. Run. Good plan. She flexed her toes in the adorable yet hugely impractical ankle-strap leopard wedges she’d been dumb enough not to change out of before her impromptu Jackson-finding excursion and kept her eyes trained on Derek.

 _Now_ , he mouthed, exploding into motion in the exact opposite direction, and for once she didn’t stop to question his methods, she just— _ran_.

She was almost a hundred yards away from the building, nearly out of the parking lot and to the road, when Derek caught up with her, a familiar flash of movement to her right, and her steps faltered for a moment in sheer relief.

“ _Keep going_ ,” Derek growled, and she tripped over her feet but did

Derek steered her to the left, toward a cluster of apartment buildings and a closed-down video store and couple of little shops, and she pushed until she felt like her lungs were going to give out and then pushed some more, cursing her shoes the whole time.

Just past the video store, Derek yanked her sideways into an alleyway and then down with him behind a dumpster, and she put her forehead on her knees and worked on getting her heart and lungs back under control.

“Shit,” she wheezed as soon as she had enough breath for speech, raising her head and immediately leaning it back against the cool metal of the dumpster. Her feet were throbbing. This was what a little vanity got her: the stupid not-yet-broken-in wedges had rubbed the sides of her feet totally raw, the fuckers. Because she’d been _running for her life_. “Shit.”

“Quiet,” Derek hissed from beside her, crouched at the edge of the dumpster and staring out. He’d put himself between her and the street, almost definitely intentionally, which Stiles was perfectly happy to let him do.

She swallowed hard. She was _not_ cut out for this action hero shit. Sure, she was great at mouthing off and hitting things with her car, but when it came to the running and the jumping and the hitting things with anything that wasn’t a car? Sydney Bristow she was not. She hadn’t even, she realized belatedly and pathetically, remembered to shove her pepper spray into her pocket with her phone and keys before she’d gotten out of her car. This was why she normally stayed home for this shit.

She couldn’t tell whether they’d lost their pursuers or not. Derek was acting like not, his focus still outward and his shoulders tensed. Something metal caught her attention at the corner of her eye; she looked up, and saw the fire escape. Up further—an open window in what looked like a completely dark apartment. A probably _empty_ apartment, since it wasn’t _that_ late.

“Derek,” she hissed.

Derek ignored her.

“Seriously, _Derek_.”

“ _What_?”

“Fire escape, right on top of us.”

Derek glanced up, then back at her. “You want us to climb for it.”

“Unless you have any better ideas.”

She waited. Derek scowled.

“You first,” he said finally, which meant that he in fact did not. “I’ll boost you up.”

“Got it,” she said, putting one hand on the wall. She wasn’t going to argue with that.

“Three,” Derek said. “Two.”

 _One_ , she finished in her head as she lurched to her feet. Derek was already braced, hands laced together; she put her right wedge in them and then grabbed for the highest possible rung, scrambling up as quietly but quickly as she could. Derek was right behind her.

When she reached the open window she heaved it up far enough for her to fit through with as much as force as she could muster and fell head-first inside in a tumble of limbs.

Derek’s entrance after was a freaking work of art, _naturally_. He somersaulted through and landed gracefully on one knee, eyes red and intent on the dark room. Then he abruptly turned back to the window. She could admit it—the intensity was a little bit hot.

She climbed awkwardly to her feet and stumbled to the side, out of his way. Then she watched, hugging the wall, as Derek’s shoulders slowly relaxed, before finally dropping entirely. 

“All clear?” she asked.

“Looks like it,” he said.

Stiles released the breath she’d apparently been holding; she felt light-headed.

“That was kind of awesome, right?” she asked, feeling kind of giddy now that the actual danger had passed, sucking in huge gulps of air. “I mean, terrifying, yeah, absolutely, but also _awesome_. Right?”

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Derek asked, incredulous, almost as if he were in pain. She should probably feel bad about causing that, but her adrenaline was too high. Her cheeks were actually starting to hurt from grinning. Her heart felt like it was trying to beat out of her chest.

“Stiles,” Derek said in alarm, and she realized then her breath wasn’t slowing down—it was speeding up, getting shallower. It wasn’t just the running. Her chest was tight.

It wasn’t a panic attack, though. It _wasn’t_. Not yet. She just had to calm down. Shit.

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek said again, more urgently, and she automatically met his eyes. He was standing a lot closer to her than he had been before.

She felt his hand press warm against the back of her neck, and that was weird of him, right? She thought it was probably weird. But it was also something she could focus on while she forced herself to breathe slower and deeper. It helped.

“Okay?” he asked when her breath had finally slowed to normal. He was still standing close; she was staring at him, wide-eyed.

Awkward.

“I think so,” she said hoarsely. “I think— Yeah.”

“Good.”

And then his nose was bumping her cheek, nudging her head up, and his mouth was hot and urgent on hers. It shocked her so much, she inhaled reflexively and too fast _again_ , gripping that stupid leather jacket and holding on for dear life as _Derek Hale kissed her_.

Her breath was shuddery but thankfully still even when he finally broke off, resting his forehead against hers.

“Still okay?” he asked, voice calm, like she’d just tripped and he’d been standing there so he’d helped her back up. Instead of _kissing her_.

“Uh-huh,” she said, eyes still squeezed shut. She was having a little trouble. Processing.Her brain needed restarting.

Finally, she heard him sigh. “You should get out of here, Stiles,” he said. “Just—go home.”

“Okay,” she said automatically, and then, finally opening her eyes, “Wait, what? No. We have to talk about that.”

Derek looked shifty in a way that kind of made her want to punch him. “About what?”

“About _that_ , you—you asshole, the—the _mouth_ thing. What _was_ that?”

She reached out and poked his chest for emphasis. It kind of hurt her finger. Derek’s face shut down (huh, who would have guessed it’d been open before?), his eyes flashed red, and although somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware she was taking her life in her hands (what else was new, right?), she poked him again.

“You were hyperventilating.”

“Yeah,” she said, “got that part. And then you _kissed me._ ”

“I did,” Derek said.

“But— _why_?” Then something occurred to her. “Were those not werewolves back there? Were we actually running from witches? Did you get, like, hit with some kind of making out spell? Maybe some sex pollen?”

“ _What_?”

She was really angry, she realized, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. Also, she was really confused. Because—

“You’re gay!”

Derek furrowed his brow.

She said, “I’ve seen you standing in line outside the Jungle!”

Technically, he’d been lurking. But, like, in line to get in, not just because that alley was especially shadowy.

“I’m . . . bisexual?”

The red had faded from his eyes completely, and he was kind of staring at her now.

“No. No! You can’t— We had a good thing going here, Derek! Like a buddy cop movie! With the sniping, and the—no kissing! There is no kissing in buddy cop movies!”

Because if Derek was kissable—if Derek was kissable, and putting his mouth on hers, and also making terrible jerkface cherry-taking jokes over ice cream— _no_.

“Erica said you turned her down!” she said frantically. “I’ve never seen you with a girl!” 

“You've also never seen me with a guy.”

Stiles made a face. Then she allowed, “Maybe that was pretty homonormative of me.”

“Maybe that was— _Maybe_?”

“Still,” she said, feeling kind of desperate. “Spell?”

“ _Fine_ ,” Derek said, “yes,” and after the relief finished flooding through her, she was left with—disappointment?

“Oh.”

“ _No_ ,” Derek snapped. “ _Not a_ _spell_.”

They both just kind of stared at each other for a minute, and then Stiles ventured, timidly, “So you just . . . kissed me.”

Derek visibly gritted his teeth. It made his jaw flex really nicely, and for the first time, she actively thought about putting her mouth on that. “ _Yes_. I mean—no, I didn’t just . . . I mean _yes.”_

“Make up your mind,” she said, and he growled.

“Huh.” She rubbed at the back of her neck, then remembered how Derek’s hand had been there just a few seconds ago, and it just threw her all over again.

Derek’s chin lifted, stiffly, like he was daring her to say something, which—man, sometimes it was like Derek didn’t know her at all. Except in this particular instance, she was having trouble coming up with anything.

Finally, Derek’s shoulders sagged, and he sighed. “Like I said—go home, Stilinksi.”

 _That_ she had a response to. She straightened up and glared. “We’ve swapped bodily fluids now, _Hale_. I think you’re allowed to call me by my first name.” Nickname. Whatever.

His eyes went hot and dark in a way she was pretty sure she’d be pleased with if she weren’t suddenly so pissed again, and she pushed off the wall and marched herself to the apartment front door, ignoring the way her feet protested like they were being jabbed by particularly pointy hot pokers.

“Don’t get dead when you go back and investigate,” she snapped, because of course he would. Without backup, like an idiot.

Then she slammed the door behind her.

As soon as she was out in the hallway, she stopped and took off her shoes. Converses from now on, _seriously_.

Now she just had to figure out how to get home.


	3. three

Between the adrenaline from the running and her confusion over the whole kissing Derek thing, sleep just wasn’t coming for her. Though probably the coffee she’d had to keep herself occupied while waiting for the stupid city bus hadn’t helped, either.

Her sleeplessness wasn’t unproductive, however. In all the tossing and turning and staring, frustrated, at the ceiling, she was able to come to two conclusions: First, that she was not adverse to the idea of Derek not being gay as a rule, and in her general vicinity in particular. And second, that, in retrospect, the last few months of her life had been even more embarrassing than she’d realized.

Much of the ceiling-staring time had been spent revisiting her past interactions with Derek, in light of the whole straight-and-apparently-interested-in-kissing-her thing. 

Like, that time the kanima kept them corralled in the pool for a couple hours, her treading water and Derek further perfecting his disgruntled face? She even remembered thinking to herself: _Gee, it’s a good thing Derek’s gay and doesn’t care about my wet breasts crushed against his back!_ And, like, how was she supposed to understand that look he’d given her after Scott had yanked them out and she’d struggled to her feet, chest heaving, clothes soaking wet and plastered to her skin? Irritation, she’d assumed. It’d become a familiar look. But what if what she thought was irritation was not just irritation, but actually Derek’s _irritated because I want to sex you up_ face?

How was she supposed to even _start_ to wrap her head around that?

About 5 am, she finally gave up, took her Adderall early, and drank a couple more ill-advised cups of coffee before getting dressed and frying up some turkey bacon and scrambling a few eggs in time to serve her dad a hot breakfast before he left for the day’s shift. Because she was an awesome daughter.

“You doing okay, kid?” her dad asked, eyeing the plate and then her, probably noticing the dark circles under her eyes with those keen sheriffing skills of his. At least she wasn’t limping from the shoes.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said, handing him coffee, too. “Had some time to kill.”

“Anything going on I should know about?” he asked mildly, shooting her a sideways look, and fondness swept through her.

“Seriously, Dad, it’s nothing,” she said. Then she realized that, for once, she could tell him at least part of the truth, so she added, “It’s just a guy.”

“Oh, yeah?” He perked up, looking interested.

She clearly had not thought that choice through.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she ended up muttering after a brief, panicked moment, shoving a napkin at him and glaring a little for good measure.

That was a lie, though; she just didn’t want to talk about with him. Before class she found herself seeking out Allison, weird off-again thing with Scott be damned. She and Allison had had a conversation just yesterday where nobody had gotten beat up or kanima-ed, right? And Allison had sounded like maybe she missed Stiles too, at least a little. It wasn’t like Stiles could go to Scott with this, right? Not when it was _Derek_. Though Allison wasn’t exactly president of the Derek Hale fan club either.

Stiles found her target at one of the picnic tables out in back by the parking lot, slid into the empty spot beside her on the bench, and said, “Did you know Derek Hale was bi?”

“Uh, hi, Stiles,” Allison said, looking simultaneously amused and disturbed. “Did you just ask—”

“If you knew Derek Hale was bi, yes.”

“That’s what I thought you said.”

Stiles prompted, “Well?”

Allison looked down at her phone, but not like she was avoiding Stiles. More like she was trying to avoid Stiles’ eyes. “Um. Yeah. I did.”

This was not how Stiles had imagined this conversation going.

“What? How?”

“My—wait.” Allison narrowed her eyes slightly. “How do _you_ know Derek’s bi?”

Stiles rubbed her palms on the legs of her jeans. Right. This part. Suddenly the need to talk to someone about this felt a lot less urgent. “It’s possible that Derek kissed me,” she said. “Yesterday. After we finished running from what I think were some werewolves we didn’t know.”

Allison’s expression sharpened. “There are new werewolves in town?”

“It might have been a witch. But Derek said it wasn’t a spell. Can we focus on my problems, here?” Stiles said.

Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the werewolves.

“Look,” Allison said, typing something into her phone with impressive speed and dexterity and hitting send (recipient: Dad, and _crap_ , Derek was going to be _pissed_ ), “I don’t think getting involved with Derek is a good idea, Stiles.”

“Of course it’s not a good idea,” Stiles said. “I just—can we pretend to be normal for a minute? Like, pretend we’ve never heard of werewolves and you can’t kill things with arrows and Derek’s just some hot older guy with a thing for leather and hot cars who, for some inexplicable reason, wanted to put his mouth all up on mine. What would you say then?”

There was a glimmer of amusement in Allison’s eyes, and one dimple popped out. “I’d say, _I don’t think getting involved with Derek is a good idea, Stiles_.”

“ _And_?” Stiles prompted, and Allison sighed.

“And tell me about the kiss. Was it good?”

“Oh my god, it was _amazing_ ,” she said earnestly. “I know I don’t have a lot to compare it to, okay, but if kissing gets better than that, I’m not going to survive it.”

Allison laughed. “Did he get all wolfy on you?” 

“No,” Stiles said, “actually, no. No red eyes, no claws.” Not until she’d harassed him about the whole thing. She frowned. “Should I be insulted?”

What if she wasn’t attractive to werewolves?

“It probably just means he’s got more control than a newly bitten teenager,” Allison said.

“Yeah,” Stiles said, and then got distracted for a bit thinking about Derek and control and maybe there were handcuffs involved. When she came back to herself, Allison was waiting patiently, and Stiles flushed. “Uh. Sorry.”

“No problem,” Allison said, dimples in full force.

“So we’re thinking I go for it with Derek, right?” Stiles said. “I mean, assuming last night wasn’t some sort of fit of madness he was having. Because clearly that sort of thing runs in his family. Look at Peter!”

But Allison’s expression was serious now, dimples gone. “If you’re going to do this,” she said, “there are some things you should probably know.”

Which sounded pretty bad. On the one hand, it seemed like Allison was offering to share some sort of Super Secret piece of information, which—yes, please. On the other hand, it didn’t sound like this Super Secret information was going to be about sunshine and/or puppies. 

But her curiosity had always been stronger than her sense of self-preservation, so she asked, “About werewolves?”

“About Derek,” Allison said.

*

“Most of this came from Gerard,” Allison said late that afternoon as she handed Stiles a warm mug and joined her at the Argents’ dining room table, “so I don’t really know how much of it is the truth and how much is . . . Gerard.”

Stiles had lied to Scott’s face about her plans for after school (easier to do since Scott had managed to get himself detention— _without_ her; she wasn’t sure whether she was proud or offended), and, after stopping by Lydia’s house to check on her since she hadn’t been at school (a visit which consisted of Lydia opening the door, raising her eyebrows at Stiles, and then shutting it again), met Allison at hers.

It was weird being in the Argents’ house again after everything that happened. It felt particularly weird to be sitting _there_ , at the big table. Like, super formal. And it was out in the open in a way that made Stiles twitchy. But this was where Allison had led her, before she’d gone into the kitchen to make tea for herself, hot chocolate for Stiles, and if Allison thought this was a conversation she should have in a place without a door that could be shut and locked, Stiles wasn’t going to argue. 

Also, hot chocolate. With cinnamon and fancy French vanilla marshmallows. Sometimes Stiles totally got why Scott was so gung-ho about this girl.

“Gerard said that Derek—he told me that Derek and Kate used to. Um. Date.” Allison smiled thinly, a tight press of her lips. “Though that wasn’t exactly the word he used.”

“Your _aunt_ Kate?” Stiles said—dumbly, because what other Kate would Allison be talking about? “Wasn’t she, like, thirty? When was this?” Stiles tried to imagine. And tried to ignore the discomfort she got at the thought, including the weird sense of ownership she was suddenly feeling towards Derek’s lips.

“Before the fire,” Allison said, voice hushed, and that was—that—

“They were like you and Scott?” Stiles said hopefully. “Star-crossed lovers? With accidental, uh, family-killing?”

“Not the way Gerard told it,” Allison said, looking uncomfortable. “And I think—I think he was telling the truth, about that part, at least.”

Stiles felt something sick crawl through her stomach. “It's Gerard, though.”

“I know it is," Allison said. "But . . ."

"But what?" Stiles asked, and Allison swallowed.

"When Kate first told me about werewolves, I guess she thought it would be better with a visual aid. She led me down into these tunnels. And then she opened the door and there was this . . . _monster_ , this animal, chained to the wall. Roaring. I didn’t know it was Derek, not at first. It was dark, and I’d never seen anything so . . .”

Stiles grabbed Allison’s hand where it was clenched around her mug, and silently held on. Allison curled her pinky around Stiles’ and squeezed; when she spoke again, her voice was steadier.

“Kate turned to look at me, and look on her face, it was like _adoration_. She said—” Allison gave a little laugh, no humor in the sound. “She said, ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’ Like he was a prize show dog. Like he was a pet. But like he was pet she wanted to . . .” Allison looked sick. “I didn’t really think about it, then, but the way she looked at him, the way she talked about him . . . After Gerard told me, it made sense.”

“Jesus,” Stiles said. 

“Yeah,” Allison said, lifting the mug for what looked like a shaky sip.

They were silent a moment, and then Allison said, “I just—be careful, okay? That kind of relationship history has to mess a guy up.”

And wasn’t _that_ an understatement.

“Sure, yeah, me?” Stiles said, scoffing. “I’m always careful.”

*

After she left, Stiles couldn’t stop thinking about it. Derek. Kate. Allison clearly believed it, even considering the source. (“Maybe he wanted me to follow in her footsteps,” Allison had said, clearly uncomfortable, when Stiles asked why she thought Gerard had told her.) Plus, after hearing Allison talk about Kate and that _torture chamber_ she’d had set up under the Hale house? Even Gerard hadn’t kept his werewolf captives _shirtless_. (And didn’t that make Stiles feel that much shittier about not telling Scott her theory about where his phone had gone, no matter what she’d felt toward Derek—mostly a lot of anger—at the time.)

So: Kate and Derek. Derek and Kate. And now Derek was kissing _Stiles_?

Stiles had met Kate only once, when she’d gone over at Allison’s, ostensibly to study, but really because, as Scott had said when he brought out the puppy dog eyes, Allison wanted to get to know her better. And honestly, Stiles had counted herself pretty lucky. She got the feeling most girlfriends would have reacted to her and Scott’s co-dependency a little differently than Allison had.

Even though her and Scott? No. There’d been those uncomfortable couple of months in eighth grade when she’d nursed a _little_ bit of a crush on her best friend, sure, but even she had known that was a bad idea. Nothing had ever happened; she hadn’t even really tried.

Anyway, dealing with the addition of Allison to their lives had made her pretty grateful for Scott’s lack of relationships up to that point. Things had been a lot easier when Stiles was the only girl in Scott’s life. Stiles didn’t always get along so great with other girls—exhibit A: eight years of trying and failing to buddy up to Lydia Martin.

So she and Allison had been awkwardly playing the we-should-probably-get-to-know-each-other-because-we-have-somebody-important-in-common game on the floor of Allison’s room when Allison had glanced up, past Stiles’ shoulder, and said, “Oh, hey, Kate." 

Stiles had turned to look behind her and Kate had been there in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame with her arms crossed and her hip cocked to one side.

“Who’s your friend?” she’d asked Allison, but her eyes were on Stiles, and the way she said it, it wasn’t exactly sexual, but it wasn’t exactly not sexual, either. She’d been intimidating, Stiles remembered, predatory in a way you didn’t have to hang out with werewolves to understand, something a little menacing about her smile.

“This is Stiles,” Allison had said. “Stiles, this is my aunt Kate.”

“Hey,” Stiles had said past the vague sense of unease, “how’s it going?”

“I’m going out,” Kate said to Allison, turning away from Stiles as if dismissing her entirely. “Tell your dad if he beats me back, okay?”

“Sure,” Allison said, and that had been it, really.

Stiles couldn’t pretend her instinctive distrust of Kate was because she was an awesome judge of character. She hadn’t, like, taken one look at her and thought—yup, psychopath who likes to burn children alive. She’d just been jealous. Allison was gorgeous, of course, slender and coltish, but Kate was—sexy. Womanly. All physical presence and strong, tight-packed curves that made Stiles extra-conscious of her skinny limbs and her hips like a prepubescent boy’s.

And that, Kate Argent, was what Derek Hale liked in a female bed partner. There was no way for Stiles to measure up.

Though Stiles had never murdered Derek’s entire family, so that was a mark in the plus column.

She ended up at the same ice cream place from the night of Lydia’s party. She was sulking because Kate Argent was prettier than her, disgusted with herself at how _that_ was the part of the story she was getting all worked up about (because _holy shit, the fire_ ), and also a little pissed at having to think about any of this in the first place. Stupid Derek Hale and his stupid lips. And his stupid not even bothering to have texted her since.

She had a lot going on in her brain, basically, and the only rational solution to that was a milkshake and probably some fries. And the ice cream place had a huge sign in the window about how their milkshakes had been voted best in the county a few years running. So.

As she sipped on a pretty awesome chocolate and strawberry milkshake and waited for the fries to cool off enough to eat, she put Kate, at least, out of her mind, and steered her thoughts toward Derek—specifically, whether he’d had any luck tracking Jackson down after she’d righteously stormed out, or gotten chased again or anything. Though it was almost a given that he’d have gotten chased again.

(“Why does everything always want to _fight you_?” she’d demanded of him once, and he’d just blinked at her. “And don’t you dare say _I’m the Alpha_ , or I swear to fucking God, Derek Hale—” And then Derek had been tackled by that week’s moon-crazed, heard-about-the-local-Alpha omega, and luckily _that_ conversation had been over with.)

But hey, bright side! Maybe that was why he hadn’t texted. He’d been busy being chased.  (She knew her phone was working, because she’d called from the landline at home and left herself a message, and also stolen Scott’s phone at lunch to send herself a text.)

Alternate explanation: He’d gotten chased and _killed_. But more likely than both of those scenarios was the one where he was just being Derek Hale. If he wasn’t showing up in people’s bedrooms unannounced, he was practically in the wind. Not a big communicator, Derek.

So, fine. She could be the bigger man Person. Whatever. _She’d_ text _him_. She grabbed her phone and jabbed out a message, scowling: _You know you’re supposed to call the next day_. Which was kind of unfair to him. Sure, he’d kissed her out of nowhere and then sent her home, but she hadn’t exactly reacted like somebody who was interested in doing any more kissing—she’d reacted more like somebody who was interested in doing a lot more yelling—so she hit the delete button repeatedly until the screen was clear, set on giving it another try. And while she was in the middle of that, Jackson walked in.

She slammed her elbow on the table trying to get underneath it and out of sight before Jackson noticed her, which, ow. When nothing happened other than the five-year-old at the closest table rolling her eyes like it was embarrassing for the kid to have Stiles in her sightline, Stiles started to think maybe she’d overreacted. She stayed down anyway, and hit speed dial #2 on the phone still in her hand before pressing it to her ear.

“Scott!” she hissed as soon as he picked up (and honestly, what would Scott have said if she’d given him the chance, anyway? “Hello”?). “I found Jackson!”

”What? Where?”

“The ice cream place on Maple. You may remember it from picking me up there last week. Apparently it’s where _all_ the cool werewolves are hanging out these days.”

“I’m already in the car, Mr. Binns just let us out a few minutes ago. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“I’ll be the one hiding under the table,” Stiles replied, then hung up because Scott shouldn’t talk and drive. Especially while speeding. Which he’d better be doing.

She had a pretty decent view of the counter area from under the table, so she could keep an eye on Jackson while he ordered and then stood around waiting. But not five minutes later they were already handing him a to-go bag, and _shit_. The diner was about ten or fifteen minutes from the school; Scott wasn’t going to make it in time.

So she’d have to stall Jackson. She could do that. Besides, they didn’t _know_ he was dangerous. Just because he was still in town when he was supposed to have moved, and just because his parents were dead, and just because he was out wandering around on his own rather than being held captive somewhere, that didn’t mean he was up to anything, like, evil. Or more evil than usual. Really, the worst she had to fear was him crushing her self-esteem, and it’s not like she’d never been _there_ before.

Having thus temporarily lied herself into action, she scrambled out from under the table, leaving her untouched fries and the last of her milkshake, and practically threw herself in front of Jackson before he got to the front door.

He wouldn’t try to murder her in front of all these witnesses, right?

“Jackson!” she said, loudly and cheerily. “Hey, didn’t you leave town? You forget something? You didn’t need to come back, we could have shipped it.”

Jackson pursed his lips. “Get out of my way, Stilinksi.”

The words were typical Jackson, but the tone . . . lacked something. Up close like this Stiles could see how drawn Jackson looked, and how pale. He had his jacket collar pulled up around his neck, which wasn’t so unusual. The bruising she thought she saw in the shadow between the collar and his skin, though, was.

Because she was an idiot, she said, “Uh, is your neck okay?”

It took a lot to bruise a werewolf, she’d learned from Scott; either whatever caused this had been really, _really_ bad, or the bruises were _fresh_. Maybe—probably—both. And maybe—probably—trying to stall Jackson long enough for Scott to arrive had been a stupid idea.

Jackson bared his teeth at her. Human teeth; he didn’t wolf out. “Just go back to hiding under the table,” he snarled, pushing bodily past her.

Well, there went her illusion of stealth.

“Jackson, if you’re in trouble, maybe Derek—”

“ _Derek_?” Jackson spat, whirling. And hey, at least she was keeping him from leaving. “Derek Hale is the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.”

Shit, what did _that_ mean? For having made him a werewolf? Something else?

Nervously, she said, “Well, if not Derek, then—”

“Who, Stiles? Who’s going to help me? You?”

“I don’t know, _maybe_ ,” she said, feeling pretty pissy herself, now.

“And what are you going to do, use Google?”

Like she hadn’t just helped saved his ass just a handful of weeks before. She squared her shoulders and glared. “Wow, way to be an asshole, asshole. I’m just trying to—”

“You’re _just trying to_ keep me from leaving before Scott gets here. Your little phone call was _not_ that sneaky. And even if you weren’t just offering so you could keep me here? Trust me, Stilinksi—you are the _last_ person I’d come to.” His eyes crawled down her body pointedly, nostrils flaring in that particularly obnoxious way Jackson had when he was trying to communicate the boundless depth of his disgust. “For _anything_.”

It was the same look he’d given her when he informed her, last year, after he thought he’d caught her staring at him at lunch, that all she was, was _a third-rate Lydia Martin—not as hot, not even as smart._ And okay, no, she _wasn’t_ as smart as Lydia, but _Jackson_ didn’t know that, because Jackson had his head so far up his ass he didn’t even notice his own girlfriend was fricking brilliant. She really wished she’d kicked him in the balls back when he didn’t have supernatural strength and healing.

“I’m so glad we’ve established you aren’t attracted to me, Jackson!” she snarked after him as he pivoted and opened the glass front door with excessive force. She said it loudly, just to make _extra_ _sure_ he was listening. “That was really keeping me up at night!”

When she turned back around, most of the diner was staring at her.

“Ex-boyfriend, you know how it is,” she lied, badly but breezily. Then went back for the rest of her milkshake, because goddamnit, she deserved it, after all that. 

But when she got to her table, someone had come and cleared it. No milkshake, and no fries. The kid the next table over grinned at her, totally lording _her_ fries over Stiles, so Stiles made the grossest face she could think of back at her and then went up to the benches at the front to wait for Scott.

Who rushed in a few minutes later. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” Stiles said, making a valiant effort to save the little skier on her phone screen and failing. She’d already lost the Yeti he was riding when Scott came through the door.

“Gone?” Scott looked crushed.

“Yeah.” She stuffed the phone back into her pocket and stood up. “Turns out my stalling techniques are way less effective on people who know me.”

“You okay?” he asked, and she shrugged, because close enough.

“I don’t think Jackson is, though. He looked pretty freaked. Kind of strung out.”

She told him about the bruises while Scott tried sniffing around in front of the building, away from the prying eyes and ears of the customers inside.

“Well, he went that way,” Scott said after a minute, pointing up the street, and Stiles snorted. Because she had gotten that much from watching him leave.

“I know,” Scott said, sounding defeated. Then he said, “You already called Derek, right?”

Maybe her “What? Why would I call Derek?” all fast and kind of shrill, was a little bit of an overreaction, but in her defense, Scott had surprised her. With his totally reasonable question.

“Because he’s _also_ looking for Jackson?” Scott took out his phone, giving her a weird look.

“Hey, you heard what Derek told Lydia yesterday,” Stiles said, falsely bright and innocent. “If we hear from Jackson, we’re supposed to tell you!”

“You sure you’re okay?” Scott asked, suspicious now.

“Oh, hey, look at the time! Gotta get home.”

“But, Stiles—”

“You know everything I know! So you stay here and brief Derek, I’m just gonna . . .”

She jerked her thumb behind her at her car, backing toward it.

She took advantage of Scott’s temporary distraction when Derek answered and got the heck out of there.

*

“Did you and Derek have a fight or something?” Scott asked as soon as Stiles picked up her phone later that night. She’d been spending a very relaxing werewolf-free couple of hours in front of the TV in her pajamas, watching a _Catfish: The TV Show_ marathon, eating the Doritos she and Scott hadn’t finished off that weekend, and trying to keep her thoughts as far away as possible from Derek. Which Scott was not at all helping with.

“Uh, what?” she said intelligently.

“The first thing he did when he showed up was do his dramatic nostril-flare thing and ask if you’d been there. He looked pretty pissed.”

The guilt was unexpected. But then she realized: it wasn’t because of Derek. It was about the idea of lying to Scott.

“What’d you tell him?” she asked.

“That you’d just left? If I’m supposed to lie for you, you have to tell me ahead of time, dude. What’s going on?”

Stiles muted the television and sighed. “I ran into him last night, while I was out looking for Jackson,” she admitted, and the silence that followed was, she was pretty sure, equal parts _Stiles, you idiot_ and _you went without me?_ Also a little bit _why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?_

Stiles rushed on, “And then we made out a little bit and did you know Allison is thinking about changing her hair?”

“ _What_?”

“I know, right?” she said desperately. “It’s so pretty all long and dark! That’s what I told her when we hung out earlier, anyway. Did I tell you we hung out earlier?”

“Stiles!” Scott sounded exasperated. “You can’t tell me you _made out with Derek_ and then expect to distract me with Allison’s hair!”

“No?” Stiles asked weakly.

So she told him what happened, and he made all the right noises, and asked all the right questions, and she felt totally bad about thinking she couldn’t talk to him, before, just because Derek was involved. It took almost a whole episode of _Catfish_ , but she told Scott everything—except for what Allison had said about Kate, which felt . . . extra private. She told him she thought maybe she wanted to see where this whole Derek thing could go.

When she was totally done, Scott said, “If Derek is what you want, then I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks,” she said, feeling warm.

“Just—” He hesitated.

“Just what?” she asked warily.

“ _Derek_ , though?”

Stiles snorted. “Yeah, I know, I don’t know. It’s not like I saw this coming.”

“Though maybe,” Scott said, voice going giggly and mischievous in a way Stiles didn’t like, “if you play your cards right, you’ll get to see _him_ —”

“ _I am hanging up on you_ ,” she said loudly into her phone, overpowering however Scott thought he should be finishing that sentence.

“Aw, Stiles—”

“BYE, SCOTT,” she said firmly. And punched the “end” button with vigor.

She was pretty sure that as long as nobody saw her blushing (or heard the blood rush into her _face_ over the _phone_ , like a big wolfy _cheater_ ), it was just like it never happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: My previous fic “Algophilia” came directly out of writing the scene here where Stiles and Allison talk about Kate and Derek.
> 
> Also, Allison chose the dining room because it was the best place in the house to hear both the front door and the garage door.


	4. four

Her dad was working the evening shift again the next day, which made it the ideal time to track Derek down and actually talk to him, in person. Because just talking _about_ him to everybody else was not the same thing. (Scott had pointed this out helpfully at lunch. She’d thrown her apple at him—something that was never as satisfying now that his new supernatural reflexes let him catch it before it made the contact she’d intended.)

Basically, she’d gotten as far as she was going to be able to go in her own head. Plus, talking to Derek was probably going to be a prerequisite, anyway, if there was going to be any more making out. And as inadequate as the whole Kate thing was still making her feel (and seriously, she needed professional help, because Kate Argent was crazy, and vicious, and also _crazy_ , completely apart from whatever went down between her and Derek), she really wanted there to be more making out. So.

“Woman up, Stilinski,” she told herself in the mirror after track practice, freshly showered and dressed in her usual skinny jeans and cotton tank—so she didn’t look like she was, you know, trying too hard.

She did suspect she might have to try her hand at the whole seduction thing, though, given Derek’s radio silence the last two days and Scott’s description of his reaction at the ice cream place, so she went with the black tank top. Then she grabbed her plaid hoodie, shoved on her Converses—because _lesson learned_ —and yelled to her dad that she was going to Scott’s on her way out to the Jeep.

She was ready for this. She was prepared. She was so prepared she’d even made sure ahead of time that Scott knew he was covering for her. But when she pulled up outside the abandoned railroad depot, Derek’s Camaro wasn’t there. That didn’t necessarily mean Derek wasn’t there either, but better safe than wandering around creepy abandoned building at night (uh, twice in one week). Engine turned off but keys still in the ignition for easy restarting, doors securely locked, she lifted her hips and dug her phone out of her back pocket.

 _where are you?_ she texted, after a few moments deliberation as to the opening least likely to spook him.

The reply was gratifyingly immediate, if annoyingly offensive in content. _What happened?_

She rolled her eyes. _can’t a girl just want to drop by?_ she typed back, swallowing back a ridiculous amount of nerves.

The next reply was not so immediate. Basically, she got silence. After almost five minutes of drumming her fingers nervously on the steering wheel, she added, _you know if you don’t tell me i’m just going to come looking for you anyway._

Bullseye. _At the house._

Pleased with her accomplishment, she dropped the phone on the seat between her thighs and restarted the car.

Derek was on the steps out front when she arrived at the Hale house. Of course he was, she realized after a couple of seconds; he would have heard her driving up before she even laid eyes on the place. Something about it threw her, though, and it took a second to realize what it was: he was _sitting_ , instead of standing in preparation for looming over her threateningly. That seemed like a good sign. Maybe.

“Fair warning,” she announced as she hopped down from the driver’s seat, forcibly ignoring the sweat on her palms and the knot in her stomach. “I’m here to talk about the kissing.”

(And maybe, if she got brave enough, Kate Argent. Though, really, did she have to bring Kate up at all? Wasn’t that more like fourth or fifth or never date material?)

When she got close enough to make out his expression, it was pretty much screaming _No shit_.

She scrunched up her face at him. Then she took a deep breath and said—because what the hell, right? In for a penny and all that—“I decided I’m for it. Let’s do it again.”

She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she’d expected. Or, no, she’d expected an eyeroll. Then some disbelief and wariness, and getting to fling herself at him and make out some more to prove it.

What she got, instead, was an expression that looked a lot like _alarm_. Like he’d been prepared for her to yell at him but her wanting to kiss him again was actually worse.

Her stomach dropped, and she went cold all over. He was going to reject her. She’d seen it enough to know it on sight. But . . . he _wanted_ this—her. He’d _kissed_ her. And when she’d gone back and thought about it, she’d even seen the signs: the times Derek had touched her when he hadn’t needed to, the times he’d stood suspiciously close, the times he’d just sort of _shown up_ , even when Scott hadn’t been around. She wasn’t making any of that up. She couldn’t be.

“Nuh-uh,” she said, shrilly, because he couldn’t do this to her, not like this—and gee, glad she’d worn the _black_ tank top, these were some prime seduction moves she was laying down right here—“no way, buddy, you kissed me first. No take-backs.”

Derek’s eyebrows rose a little; his face looked sour.

She crossed her arms and clenched her jaw. After almost thirty painfully long seconds, Derek said, “I thought you wanted to talk.”

“Oh, I did,” she said. “And I talked. It’s your turn.”

He looked away. “Are you going to make me say it?”

“Yes, Derek,” she snapped. “Yes, I am.”

His lips started this; they could darn well end it, too, if that’s what he was trying to do. It seemed like it, but she’d given up thinking she understood how Derek Hale’s brain worked the moment he _kissed her_.

“And after you do,” she added, “probably I’m going to call bullshit.”

Derek’s mouth twitched up sadly, which shouldn’t have even been _possible_.

“Stiles,” he began calmly, sounding more grown up and responsible than she’d ever heard him, “the other night was a—”

“ _Bullshit_.”

“— _mistake_ ,” he forced out over her, and when he spoke again it sounded strangled and kind of desperate. “Why do you always have to make everything so _hard_?”

“I’m going to assume you don’t mean sexually,” she said, “since kissing me was such a mistake. I mean, what, were you aiming for someone else? Like, _oops, sorry, Stiles, didn’t see you there_.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Derek snapped—less calm, now. Less responsible. Good.

“So you just changed your mind? Come on, Derek,” she said. Jeered. “I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

That was probably a lie. Her hands were trembling, even tucked in tight still under her crossed arms, against her body.

“I don’t want you to _take it_ ,” Derek growled, and she barked out a laugh, and said, because she’d never known how to let a joke go, “Yeah, I think we established that.”

And she knew she should have just left, then, really. Just gone home—she came, she saw, she humiliated herself by more or less throwing herself at someone who didn’t actually want her (or at least wouldn’t admit it), per usual. But she was still so angry.

“This wasn’t how this was supposed to go,” Derek said, raising his eyes to hers, and it was the words, more than anything else—more than the way he looked almost sick to his stomach, more than the way his fingers clenched the splintered wood of the steps—that stopped her short.

“Was I just supposed to be okay with it?” she asked, too bewildered to keep proper hold of her fury, and he dropped his eyes again and said, “You weren’t supposed to want to do it again.”

She couldn’t keep her arms still any longer; there was too much disbelief for her body to handle without flailing. “Derek, have you _seen_ you?”

Which maybe was not the best response, in retrospect. But before she could say anything more, a loud _crack_ came from behind the house, and Derek stiffened, attention no longer on her at all. He was on his feet and moving around the side of the house so fast she barely had the chance to blink. And because she had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, she followed.

She got around back just in time to see Derek fall to his knees, and then it was like the whole tableau came into focus at once: the old half-charred oak, something hanging low and heavy over one of its branches, a misshapen mass on the ground below it, and Derek, a few feet away, completely, unearthly still. There was no movement, no sound other than the low buzz of the forest and the brittle crunch of the twigs on the ground as she kept going, moving forward, stumbling a little as she realized— _that’s a dead body_. Stumbling again as the light from the moon caught the tangled blond curls hanging from the tree branch, the way the lump on the ground shaped itself into a body, large and strong and dark.

She remembered, briefly, like a flash of someone else’s life, dragging Scott out into the woods, looking for bodies. She’s not looking for bodies anymore, but they keep finding her anyway. And she always feels like she’s going to puke—that was part of the _fun_ , back before bodies were something real, something that people she _knew_ and _cared about_ kept leaving behind with increasing regularity. Back when the idea of going out in search of them was like thumbing her nose at her mother’s death, like a dare, like a way of proving she wasn’t afraid. But this time the sick feeling was from someplace deeper, someplace thick with horror.

“Derek,” she said hoarsely, sinking down beside him, touching his arm when he didn’t answer, saying his name again. She asked, even though she knew the answer, “Are they . . .”

And he said, “Yeah,” and shrugged off her hand, leaving her kneeling, light-headed in the dirt.

She could just make out on Boyd’s throat the marks from the claws that ripped it open. She was glad she couldn’t see his eyes.

Derek came back with a shovel.

*

It took over an hour for Derek to dig the hole, carefully place Boyd and then Erica inside, and cover them in dirt. He’d stopped abruptly, a few shovelfuls in, to drop back down, and she’d just barely been able to see him take Erica’s left hand and lay it gently into Boyd’s right, before pulling himself back to the surface.

It had gotten colder as she sat there, sitting vigil, or maybe she was a little bit in shock. Derek must have seen her shiver, or smelled it, or something; mid-work, he’d shrugged off his jacket and dropped it wordlessly in her lap. She wrapped up in it just as silently.

She stayed until he finished—stayed, barely registering the way her fingers were going numb, while Derek did what he must have done for Laura, earlier that year: the rope, the wolfsbane, the spiral. She stayed until it was finished, until Derek used the flat side of the shovel to pack down the dirt, then let it drop at his feet.

Then she asked, “Is your car here?”

Derek startled, like he’d forgotten she was there, or thought she’d left. That she could have left. Which just made her decision easier, fight or no fight. If he wasn’t even paying attention to his surroundings, she couldn’t just leave him here.

“No,” he said, “it’s—”

Then he stopped, like the answer was beyond him, and she climbed to her feet and hugged her torso to keep from reaching out.

“Just come with me, okay?” And then, because she knew she couldn’t say to him, _You shouldn’t be alone_ , said, “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

It’s not like it wasn’t just as true.

“Your father—”

“Has the late shift, conveniently. Just—come on. I promise not to attack you with my mouth.”

The laugh that came out of Derek’s mouth kind of sounded like he’d given up on life, but he still followed her to her car and slid inside, so she was taking it as a win.

She drove home. It had started to rain, and the squeak of her misaligned windshield wipers filled the silence as well as anything else. What would she have said, anyway?

_Sucks about Erica and Boyd._

_Sorry the betas you made ran off and got killed._

_Sorry somebody left them at your house for you to find_.

Because they _had_ been left there. There was no way that wasn’t a message. She just had no idea who from, or what the message meant.

She glanced over at Derek a few times as she drove, half to make sure he was still there, he was so silent. Inside his own head. Which she was pretty sure wasn’t the greatest place just then.

“Do you—need to call Isaac or anything?” she asked after awhile, just to keep herself from going crazy.

Derek didn’t respond, barely even twitched in recognition of the question.

“Or is he still—” she started, meaning, _somewhere else_ _following up on a now obviously useless lead_ , and Derek said, “Yeah.”

And just when she was about to give up—she had plenty of her own thoughts she could retreat back into, thanks—Derek said, “They smelled like Jackson.”

The car lurched as her foot jerked on the pedal. Her throat went dry. “Like they’d spent time in the same place recently? Or more like,” she swallowed hard, “more like Jackson was the one that—”

“I don’t know, “ Derek said. “It doesn’t work like that.”

 _I don’t know_. She’d been standing right in front of Jackson 24 hours ago. Purposefully baiting him.

“So, then,” she said, once she thought she could keep her voice from shaking, “what’s the plan?”

Derek didn’t respond.

“No plan?” she asked. That was fine. She could come up with one, then.

“The plan is to find whoever did this,” Derek said, “and _kill them_.”

The words shivered down her spine—and just when she’d thought Derek’s death threats had lost all their power, too.

She forced out, “Derek, that’s a crappy plan.”

“You don’t think they need to die?” he growled.

She did, actually, She did kind of a lot. She wasn’t like Scott. But—

“I think you can’t always just go in, claws blazing, all kill-first-ask-questions-later. You need to know what’s going on first. And you need back-up!”

“You think I can’t handle it.”

“I think you don’t know what _it_ is,” she said. Then added, “Dumbass.”

Derek muttered, “I can’t believe I still want to kiss you.”

Uh.

When she looked over, his head was leaned back, eyes closed, exposing the long line of his throat—an improvement from the way he was hunched in on himself, before.

She made herself look away. She was pretty sure she was turning pink.

“Well, that makes two of us, buddy,” she said. “ _I_ know I’m awesome, but you never seemed to be the type to appreciate my, uh, assets.”

“Because you thought I was gay.”

She was never going to live that down.

“Mind out of the gutter, buddy!” she spluttered. “And yes, okay, that. Uh, those. But I meant, like, my dry wit and awesome t-shirt collection.”

When she risked a glance at him, he was frowning. “Why wouldn’t I appreciate that?”

“You hate my t-shirts.”

“I do hate your t-shirts,” Derek muttered, and she was torn between satisfaction at being right—Scott owed her ten bucks—and irritation at Derek’s failure to appreciate her fashion choices.

“So there you go. Why would I expect you to want to—you know—” She made a gesture she hoped successfully communicated _get all up on this_.

Derek let out an audible sigh. “Stiles. You’re smart, and you’re loyal. You’re . . . brave.”

“And funny,” she prompted, because she never could leave a compliment undeflected, and Derek repeated, “ _Smart_ , and _loyal_ , and _brave_ , and what doesn’t make sense is why you’d want anything to do with me.”

She only barely stopped herself from taking her eyes off the road just to stare at him, slack-jawed, in shock. “Are you—you’re making a joke, right? This is you trying to be funny?”

“Aside from what I—look like,” he said.

She flushed with something uncomfortably close to shame. “I—” she began, then realized she hadn’t thought about why, really, she just— _did_. “Why does anybody—” she started again, then made a face, because that wasn’t right either. “You’re just _likeable_.”

Derek snorted in disbelief, and she couldn’t even blame him.

“I mean, yeah, okay, half the time you make me crazy, and you’re kind of an asshole sometimes. But apparently I’m into that.”

“Thanks, Mr. Darcy,” he said, dry, and she said, “No, look—”

She wanted to be able to meet his eyes, to check his expression. But there was also something freeing about not having to. “I like how much you care.”

He laughed, bitterly, and it made anger flare, suddenly bright and sharp under her skin.

“Shut up, you do. About Scott, even though he mostly acts like a total jerk when it comes to you—which is as much your fault as his, by the way, it’s like you push his buttons on purpose—and about Isaac and—” She swallowed hard. “—and Boyd and Erica. Fuck, Derek, you _love them_. You even care about Jackson. Because they’re yours. And maybe I just think it’d be nice, you know, to—” and shit, there were tears stinging her eyes, because this was the first time she’d managed to put the uncomfortable yearning she’d been feeling these past few days into words, and somehow that only made it worse, “—to be yours, too.”

“Stiles,” Derek said, sounding kind of stunned, and she rubbed the tears away fiercely so she could still see the road and muttered, “Shut up.” 

“Okay,” he said softly.

“God, making out was so much less traumatizing than this,” she said, mostly to herself, and Derek actually laughed. It was a tired laugh, and it was a little incredulous, but it sounded genuine, not destroyed, and she felt warm.

Then she felt bad, for feeling it, when Erica and Boyd—

The Jeep’s headlights illuminated the turn to her neighborhood. She took it.


	5. five

When, in the past, she had imagined Derek Hale in her bedroom at night—because sure, she’d imagined that once or twice, idly, even before the whole kiss thing—this was not how she imagined it going.

The house had been dark when they pulled up. She’d dashed from the Jeep to her front door through the rain, fumbling her key into the lock, as Derek followed slowly behind. Inside, she flipped on lights as she went, heading automatically up the stairs to her room as she stripped off her wet hoodie. It wasn’t until she pushed open the door that she thought about how having Derek there. He’d been there before, obviously but not since bedroom activities became a thing that could, conceivably, happen. Suddenly this felt a whole lot less innocent. Like, even less innocent than that time Derek had been hiding in her bedroom from the Law while the Law slept down the hall.

Derek was not having the same thoughts, or else the rest of the night’s events were drowning them out, because even as she froze in place, he passed her and sank down onto the edge of her bed. It was still unmade from this morning, and she wasn’t sure when the last time she’d changed her sheets was. And Derek was just sitting there, back uncharacteristically to the window.

“So, uh,” she said, still staring at him, one hand on the light switch and her hoodie in the other, “make yourself at home? If you want something to eat, or—”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

She stood there awkwardly, then, because she wasn’t sure what else to do. From the way he was acting—mostly like she wasn’t even in the room—she guessed he could use some space, but she wasn’t sure she should leave him without supervision.

She hung the hoodie over the back of the chair to dry. Then she looked back at Derek, hoping . . . she wasn’t sure what she was hoping. He still wasn’t looking at her. But then he did the last thing she would have expected. He started to talk.

“I was relieved when they left,” he said distantly.

_Erica and Boyd?_ she almost asked. But who else? She pressed her lips together.

“They weren’t my problem anymore. And when—tonight—my first thought was, _At least I don’t have to worry about what’s happening to them now_.”

Outside the rain was still falling hard; the light on in her room felt too bright and too harsh for Derek’s words, like this was a conversation that should have been happening in shadow. She took a jerky step toward him.

He looked down at his hands; they were open, palms up, fingers curled like he couldn’t bear to straighten them. “It was my fault.”

“Derek,” she said hoarsely, moving closer, “you didn’t kill them.”

“I might as well have. I let them go.” He didn’t acknowledge her as she sat next to him on top of the bed, careful not to touch him. “I drove them away.”

It hurt her, to watch him hurting like this—to see him stripped down and raw, all nerve endings. She wouldn’t have expected it, how much it affected her. She pressed the heel of her hand to her chest, over her heart, but it didn’t ease the ache.

She said, “They made their own decisions.”

He lifted his head to look at her, his eyes lost and dark.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said, and no. That was unacceptable. He could beat himself up as much as he wanted—she was no stranger to that particular pursuit herself—but she wasn’t about to let him go off and do it alone. And she wasn’t about to let him use it as another excuse to ignore whatever was going on between them.

She reached over and seized his hands. “Look, maybe you fucked up, okay?” she said. “I don’t know, that’s not—I can’t judge that. But that doesn’t mean you should just . . . stop trying.”

Derek’s mouth turned down. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She didn’t _want_ to get angry. She wanted to be calm and understanding, because he'd had a rough night. But that was bullshit.

“So you’re trying to tell me,” she said furiously, “that if I let you leave here right now—”

“ _Let me_ leave?”

“—you’re not just going to go hide out somewhere and be miserable and hide from making any more decisions because you think you always make bad ones?”

He snorted, derisive. “What do you think _this_ is?” he asked, gesturing between them.

“Oh, fuck you,” she said. “First of all, that’s insulting. And second, _this_ ,” she repeated his gesture, a little violently, “whatever _this_ is, is not just _your_ decision to make.”

“I’m older than you,” he said, and she was just pissed off enough to say, “What, like Kate was older than you?”

And then she froze, in horror, just not pissed off enough to realize how stupid she’d just been.

Derek went stiff, too, but then after a few moments so tense Stiles thought her heart might actually stop from cold, blind fear, he just . . . sagged. The tension in his muscles fell away; his shoulders released.

“You know about Kate.”

“Yeah,” she said, watching his face carefully. “I mean, probably not all of it.”

She didn’t understand what she was seeing in his expression. Wonder, maybe. Something familiar she thought was despair.

“Derek, I know you,” she said, when he didn’t say anything in response. He closed his eyes, chest visibly rising and falling like he was struggling for some kind of control. “And I know what I’m getting myself into, here.”

The first part, at least, was true.

“Can you give me a minute?” he said, eyes still closed and voice blank.

She startled—less what he’d asked for, more that he’d asked—but still tripped to her feet. “Sure,” she said, “yeah, I’ll just . . . I’ll go shower and change for bed.” Then she paused and checked, “You’ll still be here when I get back, right? Because if you’re not, I will borrow a gun from Allison and hunt your furry ass down, do you understand me?”

There was a hitch in his breath, almost like a laugh. “I understand you,” he said. It wasn’t a promise to stay, exactly, but it was something, at least.

*

She was a little afraid of what she would—or wouldn’t—find when she cautiously returned twenty minutes later, but Derek was still there, still sitting on the bed where she’d left him.

His shirt was off, it and his belt and shoes in a pile by the bed, but his pants were still on, like he’d been undressing for bed but just given up halfway through. (Probably better for her sanity that he hadn’t. She wasn’t sure what she would have done, if he’d been pantsless when she opened the bedroom door.) His feet were bare, and he looked tired. Tired like she had in the bathroom mirror. His face was wet, like he’d been crying but hadn’t bothered to wipe away the tears.

Cautiously, she went to him, stepping forward until she was standing between his thighs, close enough to feel the heat from his body even through her nightclothes. His hand came up to rest on her hip, and her breath caught as he leaned his forehead against her belly. She looked down at him—the dark shape of his hair, the bow of his shoulders—and she ached. She touched careful fingers to his hair, and when his breath sighed out she slid them over the stiff strands, rubbed the tips of them over the rough stubble on his jaw.

His other hand came up to her other hip, thumbs slipping beneath her t-shirt and then just resting there against her bare skin. Her pulse raced at the contact; no point in pretending he couldn’t hear it.

“What can I do?” she asked, hoarse, when the silence started to become too much. She wasn’t _good_ at this. At comforting people. Her best friend getting dumped, she knew what to do there. Lydia sobbing alone in her parked car, fine. But this? Derek? Like this?

The fabric of her top had inched up under his hands, and his hot breath ruffled the small hairs around her naval. When his lips touched her skin, her stomach clenched; his fingers bit briefly into the flesh of her hips through the flannel.

“Just—come here,” he said, and then he was shifting her, lifting her up until she was straddling his thighs, knees tucked around his hips and pressing into the bed.

One arm wrapped low around her back, holding her to him, while his other hand slid up her back, urged her head down so he could kiss her, slow and wet and deep. It was different than earlier that week. Better. She dug her hands into his shoulders as she let him urge her mouth open wider, used her tongue to pull him further inside.

She felt small like this, above him, and—and powerful. She pressed her palms to his jaw, surged against him as if she could get closer, shuddering when he just let her, let her tilt his head back and swallow him whole. Heat settled low in her belly, pushing for more, but he didn't move to do anything but kiss her.

Until he broke off, breath erratic, and buried his face in the shallow between her breasts where her heart was still jackrabbiting. They stayed like that, her lips pressed to the top of his head, until both their heartbeats calmed.

*

She woke up the next morning with Derek curled up behind her. There was light coming in through the windows, but a glance at the clock showed her alarm wasn’t due to go off for another forty-five minutes, and she wasn’t sure what had woken her until she heard the beep of the coffee maker downstairs. _Dad_ , she thought.

She was warm, and comfortable, even with the scratch of Derek’s leg hair where her flannel pants had ridden up her calves. (And, uh, where were his pants? Last thing she remembered, he’d definitely been wearing pants.) She didn’t really want to get up. She kind of wanted to never get up. Because _up_ meant dealing with the world outside. The one where Boyd and Erica were dead and Jackson was probably also about to be dead, unless he was evil. Again. Frankly, bed was better.

She sighed. Carefully, she dislodged the arm Derek had tucked around her waist, and slid her legs out from where they were tangled with his. Once she was standing, she looked back at him. He was still asleep, or else pretending to be. His eyes were closed, at least. And he was frowning. Of _course_ he frowned even in his sleep.

She wanted to smooth out the crease in his brow so much her fingers twitched. She could do that now, right? After last night?

Then again, Alpha werewolf. Maybe poking at his face while he was sleeping wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had, no matter how much he she thought he liked her while he was awake.

When she got to the kitchen, her father was on the phone. So she dropped down into a chair at the kitchen table, propping one leg up on the seat to wait for him to finish.

What she heard made her wish all over again that she’d just stayed the fuck in bed.

“When?” he was asking as he dumped the remains of his coffee down the drain. “How long?” And, “Right behind _where_?” He rinsed the cup, and set it inside the sink. “Yeah. I’ll be there in twenty.”

Things happened all the time in Beacon Hills that didn’t have to do with werewolves, she reminded herself. Just because _her_ life was overrun by them didn’t mean every call her father got had something to do with the supernatural.

“What’s up?” she asked when he hung up, trying for casual and hoping he was distracted enough not to notice how far she missed by.

Really, what were the odds of that call having anything to do with how she’d spent the previous evening?

“Have to go back in,” he said, tucking the phone into the holster on his belt. “Someone called in a tip overnight that led to two dead teenagers.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Right by the old Hale house, which means I have to track down Derek Hale. Again.”

And shit. _Shit_. She was glad all over again her dad did not have werewolf senses and therefore could not hear the way her heart had stopped dead and then panicked right back to life.

Except it couldn’t be Erica and Boyd, could it? Derek had buried them. Surely the rain hadn’t been heavy enough to wash them back up. It had to be some other dead teenagers behind the Hale house.

“Derek Hale!” she exclaimed after too long of a pause. “Is, uh, is he a suspect?”

“Could be,” her dad said, distracted, shrugging on his jacket and adjusting his shoulder holster underneath before holstering his gun. “Haven’t identified the bodies yet, but they were freshly buried on his property.”

Shit. Fuck. Stiles bet she could identify the bodies. Her father could too, she imagined. And that was not going to help Derek’s case. She and Scott and the Argents weren’t the only ones who’d noticed the company Derek had been keeping the past few months.

She had to do something.

“Well, I don’t think Derek did it,” she said, and her dad stopped and leveled her with a suspicious look. She winced. She must’ve overshot the cheerfulness.

“Stiles.”

“Yes, Dad?” she asked. Innocently.

“You ‘don’t think’ Hale did it.”

“Uh.” Was that a trick question? “Yes?”

“And what, darling daughter—who, may I remind you, have thus far been more than happy to accuse Derek Hale of everything from murder to yet more murder—do you base this belief in Hale’s innocence on?”

“Gut feeling?” she offered.

“Try again, Stiles,” her dad said.

She took a deep breath. Smiled as winningly as she could. And said, “So, the thing is, Dad. I have Derek Hale upstairs in my bed.”

There was a not especially surprising moment of shocked silence. And then—

“You _what_?” he roared.

“Shh,” she hissed, with a wary look at the stairs. “You’ll wake him up.”

The last thing she wanted was for Derek to come down there in the middle of this conversation. Especially with her father wearing his gun.

“I’m going to do more than just wake him up, Stiles! What is he—what were you—” He rubbed his hand over his face, clearly at a loss. She didn’t expect that to last very long.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, forehead creasing, eyes squeezed closed as if he could block out what he’d just heard, and she winced in sympathy. Maybe a little in guilt. When he spoke, his voice was tight with anger.

“Stiles, I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to start.”

“The important part is that Derek didn’t do it, okay?” she said. “He was with me last night. And, uh, the night before,” she added, just to be safe.

It wasn’t a _total_ lie. They’d both been at the diner. At some point that evening.

“My daughter is giving Derek Hale an alibi.”

“Yes?”

“My daughter. Is giving Derek Hale . . .” He trailed off. “For God’s sake, Stiles.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He looked—he looked the way he did sometimes when he remembered her mom. Defeated. The shame rolled through her, and not just for this. For everything, the last few months. For lying, over and over again. For not being sorry enough to stop.

“I’m going to have to talk to him at some point,” her father said. “Not—” His face creased in consternation. “Not about—the two of you, although that is a long, grounding-heavy talk you and I will be having very, very soon.”

And goody, another opportunity to lie through her teeth.

“I can’t deal with this right now. Right now, I have to go in and figure out who those bodies belonged to and find those kids’ families. Tell Hale—” His mouth tightened. “Tell Hale to be available. And for the love of God, Stiles, _get him out of your bed_.”

“I will, Dad, I swear,” she said. At some point.

“Derek Hale,” she heard him mutter as he headed for the front door. “Jesus Christ.”

The door closed a little louder than usual.

She was a _horrible daughter_.

“This was fun,” she observed to the empty kitchen.

*

When she got back to her room, Derek was sitting up in her bed, book open on his lap but clearly not reading it, watching her tentatively, apprehensively. Which pretty much guaranteed he’d heard the whole conversation downstairs.

“I just lied to my dad for you,” she greeted him, closing and locking the door behind her, even though her dad was gone. “Again. More. So I better get my first non-solo orgasm out of this at some point. Or at least more cuddling. Don’t make me regret keeping you out of jail.”

It was actually pretty impressive, watching his face cycle from horror to panic to amusement, then finally to the usual long-suffering expression she’d come to associate with her effect on him.

He rolled his eyes. Taking that as consent to the cuddling part, she climbed up onto the bed next to him and settled against his side like this was the millionth time she’d done it, not the first.

“Good morning,” she said with satisfaction.

Derek hesitantly reached for her hand, laying across his stomach, and laced their fingers together. Her heart actually fucking _fluttered_ a little bit in her chest.

She kind of wanted to ask what this was, now that he wasn’t trying to get out of it anymore. But she also felt like not talking about it might be the better part of valor here, or at least the better part of keeping Derek Hale around. And she might be liking having him around more than she’d anticipated.

“I’m skipping school,” she decided, giving in to the temptation to rub her cheek against his still bare, still sleep-warm shoulder. “I’m skipping school, and we’re going to stay here in bed and eat ice cream instead.”

Unsurprisingly, Derek said, “Stiles, we shouldn’t. I can’t.”

She scrunched up her nose. “What, did you have other plans?”

There was a pause long enough that she almost started to regret her sarcasm. “. . . No.”

“Great! I’ll get dressed and go to the store,” she said, wiggling out from under his arm and off the bed, “and you’ll stay here and read or whatever, and after school Scott’ll come over and we can figure out how to find Jackson.”

Derek looked a little mutinous, but he didn’t move to get up, so she was pretty sure it was just for show.

“It’ll be good,” she said, “like a mental health break,” and Derek’s jaw flexed, but he said, “Fine.”

“That’s the spirit,” she said, and, flush with victory, ducked down to drop a kiss on his cheek without thinking.

He caught her wrist as she started to come back up, and her stomach dropped. “Stiles,” he said to her softly. “Thank you.”

“Uh, sure,” she stuttered out as her face flushed hot. “You know. Anytime.”

*

She was standing in front of the frozen dairy selection, considering her options, when the phone rang. She dug it out of her pocket, expecting it to be Scott—she’d completely forgotten to text him she was skipping—and was surprised to see it was Derek.

“Miss me already, huh?” she said as she answered, wedging the phone between her ear and her shoulder so she could open the frozen food door without putting her basket down.

Ice cream had been such a good idea. It was a proven panacea. Plus, it was like a callback to their first date! Or only date. Or not actually a date of any kind. Whatever. The point was, she was going to get a jar of Maraschino cherries, and then not let Derek have _any_ of them.

“Stiles,” Derek said urgently, “you need to get back here. Now.”

“What? What for?”

_Rocky road . . . peanut butter fudge swirl . . . ooh, Americone Dream._

“It’s not safe.”

Okay, weird.

“It’s a minimart, Derek. I didn’t even make it to the Safeway.” But she glanced to down both sides of the aisle anyway out of reflex, reminding herself where the exits were and keeping an eye out for anyone who looked kind of skulky.

“Your father said the police found Erica and Boyd.”

She closed her eyes briefly at the sting of the reminder. “Uh-huh,” she said, dragging out the _huh_.

“That means someone had to know where to dig. They must have been there the same time we were, and if—they’ll know I left with you. Stiles—please.”

She’d never heard him say _please_ before. Especially not like that.

“I’ll be safe, I swear,” she said. “I’m almost done here, I’ll be back in, like, ten minutes, tops. With ice cream.”

She closed the freezer door; Jackson’s reflection sneered at her over her shoulder in the glass.

“Hey, Stilinski,” he said.

She felt a pinch on the side of her neck, and then, because fuck her life, seriously, things went black.


	6. six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like, just to be safe, I ought to give a slight trigger warning for the first part here, re: the sexual undercurrent to some of the threats. (If you’re looking to avoid that, I’d stop after “I had some help” and then skip down to “Then Jackson froze.”)

The first thing Stiles noticed when she woke up was how dry her mouth was. She started rubbing her tongue against the back of her teeth, trying to generate enough saliva to speak, or at least swallow.

The second thing she noticed was that her arms were above her head, her wrists and fingers numb. She yanked against whatever was holding her there instinctively, even as her eyes shot open in panic. It gave a little, but not enough that she thought she could work her hands free. Rope?

“How’s it hanging, Stilinski?” Jackson asked from across the dim, mostly empty room.

And really, getting tazed and kidnapped wasn’t enough? Now she had to deal with Jackson’s attempts at jokes, too?

“How long did it take you to come up with that one?” she asked, voice rasping. “The _whole_ time I was unconscious, or did you have time to take a bathroom break, too?”

“Maybe I genuinely want to know how you’re feeling,” Jackson said, really not at all genuinely.

“Oh, in that case, I’m fine,” she replied. She glanced up at her hands—yep, rope. She yanked on it in again in frustration, and something dark and wet slid down her arm. She gritted her teeth. “You know. Little hungry, maybe.”

Jackson rolled his eyes, and he could go fuck himself.

The space they were in looked like an old warehouse, maybe. High ceiling, wood walls, lots of crates and dust. It was like the cliché of a hostage scene—like a theater set.

“You did miss a couple of meals while you were out,” Jackson said. “I know how much you like to eat.”

“Was that dig on my _weight_?” she asked, incredulous. Her arms jerked unconsciously in her indignation, and she winced and cursed as the rope rubbed against the broken skin.

Her shoulder joints were sore, she realized. Her armpits felt weirdly bruised. And trying to move her shoulders around just dug the rope painfully into her skin. So she really must have been there for a while. Which meant someone would be rescuing her soon, right? Derek had been on the line, still, when Jackson showed up. Hadn’t he? She really, really hoped he had.

“Look, do you want me to loosen that a little?” Jackson asked, gesturing at the rope and sounding bored.

Stiles blinked and said, “Uh. Yes? But . . . you aren’t afraid I’ll, uh, escape?”

He snorted as he got up from his crate, which she took as a no. Flattering. Also probably correct. Not that she wasn’t still going to try.

“I don’t suppose you’d also want to tell me your evil plan, while you’re at it?” she said as he approached, sliding his cell phone into his back pocket (and what had he doing with it to begin with, trying to get his abandoned warehouses badge on Foursquare?).

He came to a stop right in front of her—like, _right_ in front of her, closer than he usually got, even at his douchiest. Too close for her personal comfort, actually, and it made her lungs start to constrict. Something was different about him, even compared to the other day. Something was _off_.

Jackson smirked at her, held up a hand, and extended his nails into claws. Like, _really close_ to her face. And then, just as he cut through the knots holding her wrists together, his eyes flashed red.

Not blue. Red.

 _Derek_ , Stiles thought in shock, stumbling backwards. Jackson grabbed her wrists and jerked them back up above her head, and was too dazed to remember she was supposed to resist. Jackson was an Alpha. If Jackson was an Alpha, then Derek . . .

“Calm down, Stilinski,” Jackson grunted as he re-looped the rope, which was _not at all_ conducive to calm. Even if he’d wrapped the rope so that her shoulders weren’t pulled up so tight. “Hale’s fine. For now. You, on the other hand . . .”

He bent his head to her neck, inhaled hard and deep as he pulled the knot at her wrists tight again. She jerked back but his claws bit into her skin, holding her in place.

“Then how did you—” she asked, shaky, and Jackson flashed a wide smile she’d never seen on him before, teeth bright and white and too close to her face.

“Didn’t Hale tell you? Pack of alphas in town, here to recruit,” he said. “I beat one.”

No, Derek _hadn’t_ told her. A pack of _alphas_? That seemed like something he maybe should have mentioned! To Scott, at least! Also—a whole _pack_?

“So you just beat an alpha? That easy, huh?” she asked, her voice cracking, her eyes flitting desperately around the room for . . . something. She didn’t know what. But there were just more stacks of crates. A door at the far end. Nothing else. Nothing.

“I shouldn’t have won,” Jackson admitted absently, eyes fixed somewhere above her collarbone. “But not everybody thought old Ennis was worth keeping around.”

“So you cheated,” Stiles said, because she was _an idiot, oh my god_.

The Jackson she knew would have been infuriated. This Jackson just laughed.

“I had some help.” 

Because that didn’t sound ominous at all.

“No shame in getting a little help, is there? Wasn’t that what you were saying to me the other day at the diner?”

“Uh.” _Now_ he was starting to sound angry.

“Bet you wish you were going to get some of that about now. But you aren’t, _Stiles_.” The way he said her name was horrible. Almost obscene. “It’s just you and me.”

“You really must be a bad guy now,” she shot back despite the shiver that went through her. “You’re monologue-ing.”

“And you’re scared,” Jackson said. “ _So_ scared. I can practically taste it.” 

She swallowed hard and tried to turn away, but he grabbed her chin in one still-clawed hand.

“Most people’s fear is thick and bitter. But yours, Stiles. Yours is _sweet_.” He leaned in and nudged his nose against her throat. “Smells so good, baby,” he mocked. “I mean, you know that’s why Hale wants you, right?”

“Fuck you,” she managed, throat tight. How did he even . . .

“I heard you two, last night, out in front of his house. Must have been like Christmas and your birthday all rolled up together, having a guy that looks like _that_ make a move on _you_.” He pulled back to smile at her, wide and insincere. “But you know why he did, Stiles? You know what makes you so appealing to alphas like us?”

She was going to be sick. She was going to throw the fuck up all over Jackson’s horrible, smirky, jerkhole of a face, and shit, fangs, _fangs_. His eyes flashed red again.

“You smell like _prey_.” 

What he’s saying about Derek, it’s not true. She _knows_ it’s not true.

“Derek doesn’t want to kiss you,” Jackson hissed. “He doesn’t want to _hold your hand_ or go on little dates or watch movies on your couch. He wants to _eat you_. He wants to hold you down and rip your throat open and feast on your fucking blood.”

Jackson’s breath was hot and wet in her ear, his chest rising and falling fast, like he was worked up. Like he was excited.

“But I’m going to get there first.”

Then Jackson froze.

Over the rush of blood in her ears she heard a long scraping sound. Then another. And another.

“Jackson,” a low, smooth voice said mildly from the shadows by the door. “There will be plenty of time for dinner later, don’t you think?” 

Jackson’s hand fell from her face, and he took a step back. His eyes were still alpha red, but he’d put his claws away.

There was that same scraping sound again as her creepy savior stepped out into the light. That noise was a long, thin cane—the kind blind people used. The man was tall, but almost weedy; his wrists were thin and knobby, and his clothes fit loose. He was wearing sunglasses, and a slightly absent smile that made something curl up and cringe inside her when he looked her direction.

“You _do_ still have her strung up, at least, yes? Presentation is everything, after all." 

“Does it really matter, as long as Hale shows up?” Jackson looked mutinous, and he must have sounded that way, too, because Stiles was pretty sure the guy—werewolf?—could tell.

“You don’t think,” he said pleasantly, “that Derek Hale will be easier to beat if his attention is split? If he knows she’s hanging there vulnerable, unable to get away, and he has to protect her, as well?”

Jackson was silent, and the man prompted, “Well?”

“Maybe,” Jackson muttered.

“Finding her dead won’t make him easier to kill,” the man said, and Stiles bit down so hard on her cheek that she tasted blood. They could probably smell it. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting—it’s not like they’d be luring Derek here for a tea party—but hearing it still felt like a physical shock. “It’s not all showmanship, Jackson. It’s _strategy_.”

Stiles had been in danger a lot since Scott had been bit. She’d nearly been attacked by Derek’s crazy uncle; she’d nearly been attacked by _Scott_. She’d been kidnapped, and beat up, and used to hurt her best friend. But this was the first time she’d ever been bait. She’d take a pass next time, all things considered.

“I still don’t understand why I have to fight him alone,” Jackson said, and the man’s tone when he replied was so smooth that if Stiles hadn’t been watching him so closely, she would have missed the irritation altogether.

“Because,” the man said, “you were his beta. You want to be one of us? You kill him, and you kill your old pack. Just like the rest of us did.”

Stiles’ breath caught in her throat. _Your old pack_. Derek’s other betas.

Erica and Boyd.

She didn’t know why she hadn’t assumed it was Jackson that killed them the moment she woke up here. But she hadn’t. She freaking hadn’t.

She started to tremble, in anger this time, rather than fear. She wanted to scream. She wanted to make Jackson _hurt_.

The man smiled. “Don’t worry so much, Jackson. You won’t even care, after the first one. No one ever does. You’ll _want_ to. All that power,” he mused, almost to himself. “I suppose it just makes a person want more.”

The man patted Jackson’s cheek twice, just a bit too hard to be mistaken for affection. Jackson’s nostrils flared, but he stood in place like a soldier at attention, hands at his sides, and just took it.

“Good boy,” the man said. “Call me when it’s done.”

He slid his cane out in front of him, tapping and scraping, as he turned back toward the door.  

“You want to be part of that guy’s pack?” Stiles said, incredulous, as soon as the man was out of sight and the scraping sound had faded away. He’d still hear her, but he also didn’t have a problem with Jackson killing her friends, so fuck that guy.

“Shut the fuck up, Stilinski,” Jackson snapped, turning away from her.

“No, _seriously_ ,” she said. “He makes _Peter_ look downright warm and cuddly.”

Jackson didn’t even acknowledge her.

“Do you honestly think you can beat Derek?” she demanded, as she renewed her attempts to squirm loose the rope at her wrists. If Jackson wasn’t going to look at her, she sure as hell was going to take the opportunity to keep trying to get free. “You’ve been a werewolf for, like, a month, and an alpha for less than two _days_. He’s been an alpha since February and a werewolf his _whole life_.”

“That’s why we had to weaken him first,” Jackson snapped over his shoulder.

“That’s why you had to _kill Erica and Boyd_ ,” she said. “Say their names, you fucking asshole.”

“ _Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd_ ,” Jackson enunciated, vicious, as he finally turned. “And it was me or them.”

“Did you take a poll? Because I think most of us would have voted _them_.”

“I don’t _care_ , Stilinski,” he snarled, eyes flashing, body starting to—to ripple.

 _He’s an alpha_ , she remembered a little late. A brand-new, out-of-control alpha. And she couldn’t even run.

“Don’t you get that? _My parents are dead_. And it wasn’t even an accident this time, it was _because_ they were my parents. So what am I supposed to do now, huh? Where am I supposed to go if I don’t—”

Whatever he said next was drowned out by the sound of howling.

“Better start praying for your boyfriend,” Jackson said, garbled and feral, through his fangs.

Then the door flew open, Derek silhouetted in the doorway, claws already out.

“It’s about time,” Jackson said, lowering into a crouch.

Derek stepped into the light. His face was distorted, eyes red, and he looked furious—over her. “Where is she.”

“You keep losing things,” Jackson sneered. “Reyes and Boyd. Stilinski. You ought to keep better track of your toys, if you don’t want them broken.”

God save her from terrible metaphors that were supposed to be threatening.

“Back here,” she called out, and when Derek turned toward her voice—Jackson _sprung_.

Derek dropped into defensive position just in time to meet Jackson’s attack head on.

From her position, she couldn’t make out individual movements, no matter how much she stressed the room and craned her neck. But it was clear that Derek was better. A lot better. Jackson was bleeding already, and Derek had barely broken a sweat.

Maybe he was as strong as Derek, but he wasn’t as _good_. He didn’t have enough experience. Jackson wasn’t going to win this. The other werewolf—the other alpha?—had to be an idiot to think he could.

That should have felt like good news. It meant she’d be out of here soon. But something about the whole situation seemed . . . off.

The other alpha hadn’t sounded like an idiot. He’d sounded _smart_. Smug and superior, but smart. Like he knew he had all his dominoes lined up and was relishing the anticipation of seeing them start to fall.

And then it hit her.

 _Here to recruit_ , Jackson had said about the alpha pack. Which meant they must have come for Derek—unless they were in the habit of sacrificing an established member every time they wanted a new one. Maybe, in taking Jackson, they hadn’t switched their focus at all.

Jackson had sounded desperate, right before Derek arrived. And he’d never been a quitter. He was going to kill Derek, or die trying. Which meant he was going to kill Derek—or Derek was going to have to kill him.  And if Derek found out Jackson was responsible for Erica and Boyd . . .

 _You won’t even care, after the first one_. _No one ever does. You’ll_ want _to._

The alpha pack won either way. If Jackson killed Derek, he’d become their newest recruit. If Derek killed Jackson, _he’d_ become their newest member. Peter wasn’t at full strength; Isaac was not just a beta, but new. Neither of them would put up much of a fight.

She remembered how Derek had changed when he’d killed Peter and become the alpha. If killing one of his betas worked the way the other alpha had implied—would he care about any of them anymore?

For the first time since she’d heard Derek’s howl, Stiles was afraid.

She had to get out of this rope; she had to get free and _stop this_. Even without werewolf senses she could hear the sound of claws ripping through flesh, bones breaking; she could smell the blood.

She yanked desperately as Derek threw Jackson into one of the larger stacks of crates, started trying to dislocate her thumb. Couldn’t be that hard, could it? People did it in movies all the time.  She’d read how on Wikipedia. But she couldn’t get enough leverage.

“Stop it!” she screamed, “Derek, _stop_ ,” and it got him to look at her, but that just meant he was distracted long enough for Jackson to surge up and swipe scary-close to Derek’s throat, and then Derek wasn’t looking at her anymore. Tears burned in her eyes as she gripped frantically at the rope, yanked more, harder.

Then suddenly the rope gave—no, snapped—was cut?—and when she stumbled from the sudden lack of resistance, Scott caught her before she could fall.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. She’d never been happier to see Scott before in her life, and she was happy to see Scott a _lot_. 

“Are you okay?” Scott asked urgently, holding her shoulders.

“Yeah, fine, I’m fine,” she said, even as she leaned heavily against his hold, the pain in her shoulders flaring and the feeling that rushed suddenly back into her hands making her eyes water. “But we have to stop them.”

“I have to get you out of here first,” Scott said, already looking away from her like he was picking their escape route, and she hit his shoulder with a blood-smeared fist to get his attention.

“No, we have to _stop them_. Derek could kill him.”

“Derek wouldn’t.” Scott glanced at her, alarmed.

“He might have to,” she said. “Jackson’s not going to stop on his own. And he’s an alpha.”

Jackson let out a pained shriek, and they both whipped around to look. Jackson was on his knees, pants torn and nearly black with blood at the back of the thighs, and Derek stood behind him, over him, claws stained, chest heaving. Jackson had been coming for her and Scott. And Derek had stopped him.

Derek yanked Jackson’s head back by his hair, exposing his throat. “Give me one good reason not to kill you right now,” Derek said, low and raw.

“Derek, don’t!” Scott said.

“Get Stiles out of here,” Derek said, still staring at Jackson where he held him rigid.

And okay, no. Scott glanced at her. She gave him her best _try it and die_ look, and his mouth quirked a little before he turned his attention back to Derek.

“Derek, don’t do this,” Scott said.

Jackson was trembling. He was trembling and pale and looked like he was about to shit himself, but he sneered anyway. “You want me to beg? The way Erica begged, before I killed her?”

Erica, who’d been so vital and biting and fierce.

Derek tightened his hand in Jackson’s hair and roared, the sound full of fury and grief and failure, as nausea rolled through her at Jackson’s words. Her hand clenched on Scott’s arm.

“Jackson, you—” Scott breathed, at a loss for words. 

“It was the alpha pack,” Stiles said, “he couldn’t say _no_ ,” though it made her sick to make excuses. Because she’d have said anything, she’d have lied through her teeth if she could, to keep Derek safe, and she hadn’t realized that, hadn’t realized exactly how much she cared, not until right now. 

“The _what_?” Scott asked.

“I don’t care,” Derek said, voice hoarse.

“Derek,” she said desperately, “it’s a trap, they want you to do it—they want you to kill your own—” 

“Stiles was next,” Jackson said, “I was going to take her apart, I was going to make her scream—”

Derek yanked his head back further, and Jackson’s voice cut off as he gasped for breath. 

“Stop it, Derek, you beat him, it’s done,” Scott said.

“Just _do it_ ,” Jackson screamed, “just _kill me_ ,” and Derek looked at Stiles.

“Don’t let them win,” she said, through her shock at Jackson’s plea, “Derek, please—”

And Derek pushed Jackson away, sending him sprawling across the floor. Stiles sagged in Scott’s grip.

“You need to leave town,” Derek said, mechanical and cold. His shoulders were slightly bowed, like there was a heavy weight there, bearing him down. He looked so tired.

Jackson pulled himself up from being face down on the ground, red and sweating. His legs dragged useless behind him, like Derek had severed the tendons. 

“And go where?” Jackson asked, and Derek said, “I don’t care. As long as you don’t stay here.”

“They’ll come after you,” Jackson threatened—or warned, Stiles thought. It didn’t really sound like a threat should, his voice breaking as Derek’s wolf features melted away and his claws retracted.

Derek said, “They were coming after me anyway.”

And that was it—the end. Jackson closed his eyes. Derek stepped away from him and toward her and Scott, back straight again and stiff, face grim.

“Come on,” Scott said, tugging her toward an exit behind them she hadn’t been able to see before, supporting her as they started to move.

As they got closer to the back exit, she caught sight of an arrow sticking out of the wall, behind where she’d been suspended.

“Allison?” Stiles asked. “She came too?”

“Of course she did,” Scott said, sounding exasperated, “you were missing,” and Stiles felt warmth spread through her. “She’s with the car.”

“Less talking, more moving,” Derek barked behind them.

“Okay, cranky,” she murmured, glancing over her shoulder to give him a brief, worn smile. She _thought_ his eyes softened, though it could have been a hallucination. She’d had a rough couple of hours.

She took one last look back at Jackson, still slumped over on the ground. She probably should have felt bad for him, but she just couldn’t. Not really. Not even for Lydia. Maybe that made her a terrible person. She didn’t care.

“I’ve got to get the door,” Scott said. “Can you stand?”

“I’ve got her,” Derek said, suddenly right behind her, his arm coming up to brace her back as Scott transferred her weight.

“Thanks,” she said to him, meaning—a lot.

But he just pressed his lips together, instead of saying, _No, thank_ you, _Stiles, for stopping me from playing right into an evil alpha werewolf’s master plan_ , and passed her back to Scott, propping the door open for her and Scott to go through. The door fell closed behind them, Derek still inside.

* 

Scott texted Allison as soon as they were outside the warehouse, and she met them halfway, throwing open the driver’s side door with the car still running.

Scott took a step back as Allison’s arms came up around her, and Stiles let herself lean into the hug. She was going to have to stop making so much fun of Scott. Allison’s hair really _did_ smell that good.

“You’re okay,” Allison said into her neck, squeezing her briefly and then just—holding her, letting her bury her face in Allison’s shoulder and breathe for a moment.

“Allison, we need—” Scott started, and Allison said, “I know,” and the whole exchange was really awkward, because Scott and Allison, but Stiles didn’t even care, she was just so glad they were both _there_.

Allison drove them out of there while Scott cleaned her wrists with alcohol that bubbled in the open cuts, then wrapped them up with gauze, his hands gentle and sure.

“How’d you guys find me?” Stiles asked once Scott had packed everything back into the first aid kit.

“It was Lydia,” Scott said. “Jackson broke up with her by text, and she was mad enough that she actually followed Derek’s instructions and called me. After getting Danny to track his phone.” 

“Yay, Lydia,” she said drowsily but sincerely.

“Derek had already called me. So we came.”

“Well, thanks,” she said. She leaned forward a little, glancing up, to meet Allison’s eyes in the rearview mirror and include her too, and got a small dimpled smile in return.

Scott just shoved her—very gently—on the shoulder. It hurt a little anyway, but that was okay. “Don’t be an idiot,” Scott said.

“Takes one to know one,” Stiles said back, resettling against the seat so that their shoulders were touching.

Scott grinned and said, “Yeah.”

Stiles could only see Allison’s eyes in the mirror now, but Stiles was pretty sure she was laughing. 

*

It was after 3 am when Stiles registered that the reason she’d woken up was not because she’d rolled over on her still-raw wrists again, or because she’d been having a nightmare about half of Jackson suspended from the ceiling of the abandoned garage where they’d found his parents, sneer still on his Abercrombie & Fitch model face. This time, it was because she wasn’t alone.

“What the—Derek,” she said muzzily, sitting up. Her body was fight-or-flight tense, but her brain hadn’t caught up yet, so she just stared at him, bleary-eyed, until her body calmed back down. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s fine,” Derek said, voice rushed.

“Is Jackson—”

“Gone.”

“Good,” she said.

She tucked the hair at one temple behind her ear and rubbed the back of her neck with one bandaged hand, feeling awkward without knowing why. Probably because there was a boy—a werewolf—in her bedroom in the middle of the night. And she wasn’t sure exactly where they stood.

Instead, he was staring at her, looking pained, and she realized her was staring at her wrists—at the bandages. Not her most flattering fashion accessory, though, admittedly, also not her least.

“Sorry I never delivered on the ice cream,” she said, instead of the half dozen sensible things she could have said—like _why are you here?_ or _it isn’t as bad as it looks_ or _are we dating now_?

“Sorry I almost got you killed,” he said back, and before she could figure out exactly what to say to that, he looked away and said, “You should rest.”

“Then why did you come here and wake me up?” she asked, exasperated at the dodge. “I’m not complaining,” she added quickly. Because she _wasn’t_.

She imagined what he meant to say was, _I wanted to make sure you were okay_. His mouth opened. But nothing came out. He closed it again, looking hilariously—maybe also a little endearingly, shut up—bewildered.

“Oh my _god_ ,” she said, and pulled back the edge of the covers, “get _over_ here.”

When he didn’t immediately do anything, she rolled her eyes and turned over so she wasn’t looking at him, pretending at not caring when her heart was beating fast. She left the covers pulled back, though, an open invitation, and after a few moments, she felt the bed depress with his weight. She smiled.

“Besides,” she added, once he’d slid in next to her and settled carefully in, warm if a little stiff, against her, “Dad still needs to interrogate you in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! At least for the moment.
> 
> I was never Jackson's biggest fan, but I thought he deserved a more portentous send-off than the one he ended up with-- something that drew on his insecurity and power issues, and how easy they make it for others to use him. (Speaking of, I also think there's a great alternate 3A Jackson/Allison story to be told about them dealing with having been turned into monsters and used by others, but I am not the one to write it.)
> 
> Next up: The-- shorter, somewhat angstier, significantly pornier-- female Derek one-shot. (You know, for balance . . .) _ETA_ : [Now posted](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1120101).


End file.
